Writing, research, technology, semiotics, math education, literacy education, music education
Music, teaching, writing, technology, Christianity
Coursework for this degree included Music History, Music Theory (how music works), multiple ensembles, courses on pedagogy (how to teach), and individualized lessons on violin, piano, viola, cello, and bass.
The coursework in this degree focused on human psychology and the ability to establish a therapeutic relationship with people who need help.
This degree was part of the Comparative Studies program in which students were able to select a unique focus and delineate the classes they would take in order to study that area. Semiotics is the study of how things such as language, music, and the visual arts create meaning and communication between human beings. There is no one department with courses in semiotics; courses were selected in Comparative Studies, Philosophy, Music Theory, Art History, and English Literature.
Carolyn O's writing about education includes published research about teaching, writing information and how-to articles for teachers and pre-service teachers, writing to help students learn in online and hybrid courses, writing as a means of making a wide range of information available to students (on a wiki), making analyses of teaching and learning, and analyzing research. She specializes in taking complex topics and making them understandable to non-specialists. She has also done desk top publishing for an educational journal, copy editing, and developmental editing (helping authors conceptualize their books and organizing their writing into logical chapters).
As an educator, Carolyn O is a technology evangelist, finding technological resources and writing about them, writing about how to implement technology in the classroom, and helping people who are new to or fearful of technology to become competent and enthusiastic technology users. Much of her work has been published on various wikis for her students and university colleagues to use. Carolyn is a Prezi Educator; she submitted a Prezi to the creators of that web app and was one of 60 selected out of a group of 500+ applicants.
During the 1980's, Carolyn O became an advocate for battered women, working at two different shelters and in a state-wide organization. Her writing in this area, at that time, consisted of grant applications, newsletter articles at both local and state-wide levels, information on domestic violence for community members, and reports on state-based visits concerning statewide standards to battered women's shelters all over Ohio. She has been employed exclusively by non-profit organizations since the 1980s.
Grant writing has been a part of several jobs Carolyn O has held. She has written grants to support new projects in a non-profit agency (a battered women's shelter) and at the statewide level to create projects in an agency devoted to statewide advocacy for battered women. Writing grants has also been a part of her job at the university. There, she has written grants to support research in mathematics education and the development of technology education.