Nikki Massaro Kauffman

Nikki Massaro Kauffman Joins ODL

The Office of Digital Learning is pleased to welcome Nikki Massaro Kauffman, programmer/analyst, to the team. She will be joining us from Penn State Outreach’s Learning Design unit where she was part of the programming, multimedia, and user experience teams. What drew her to ODL is the ability to combine all three areas of expertise.

“Two things sold me on the position – being able to do all the things I enjoy doing, and working with a great team,” explained Massaro Kauffman. “I’m leaving behind a wonderful educational technology team at Outreach, so it really took a special group of people to make it an even trade. Every phase of the interview process, I liked the group more and more. I haven’t even started yet, and I already feel like I found my home.”

She will be working closely with Bryan Ollendyke to create tools for subject matter experts, design staff, and students to create accessible, interactive content. Massaro Kauffman uses the term “authoring experience (AX)” to refer to the user experience for content creators and believes AX is critical to content creation. She is also involved with the HighEdWeb organization as member of their membership committee.

Massaro Kauffman’s first degree was in Secondary Education (English & Communication) from Penn State and was a Schreyer Scholar with honors in Curriculum & Instruction. She taught in the classroom for five years before getting her second degree in Computer Science from Mt. Aloysius.

“What I like about educational technology is that it combined my love of teaching, coding, and design into a single field,” she noted. “What amazes me is that I work in a job that didn’t exist when I was a kid, a teenager, or even a traditional college student, so I’m very interested in how students today can take their passions and adapt them to emerging fields.”

Massaro Kauffman not only brings experience to the job but also an enthusiasm for community. A founder of a women’s group in Altoona and proud office prankster, she loves bringing people together through fun, food, and little things like saying good morning. Massaro Kauffman also makes her own jewelry and has four cats (a family that she adopted together). Her creativity and talents will be exciting additions to the ODL shop. 

To read her full bio, visit the ELMS:LN site: http://bit.ly/2gHGB5V