Alicia Swaggerty

Instructional Designer

Alicia has worked as an instructional designer since graduating with her master’s degree in Instructional Technology from Bloomsburg University in 1989 in the settings of government, corporations, and higher education. She has been the lead designer on a variety of projects, including the army’s Apache AH-64 navigational equipment, automated library systems, and Penn State’s master of science in Adult Education, bachelor of science in Nursing (RN to BS), and the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program, as well as the Nursing Informatics, Management, and Forensics certificates. She is currently the lead designer for the master of education (M.Ed.) in Curriculum and Instruction.

Since August 2003, Alicia continued her Penn State position from a distance in Knoxville, Tennessee, and more recently in Cocoa Beach, Florida, where she has moved with her husband and two daughters.

She combines her many years of instructional design experience with equivalent years of coaching experience. Alicia played basketball at Bloomsburg University and went on to become head coach at the high school level until she accepted her current position with Penn State World Campus in January 2000. As her daughters grew, she continued to coach at the elementary and middle school levels, but she has returned to coaching at the high school level as the varsity girls basketball assistant coach at Cocoa Beach Junior/Senior High.

Her research interests encompass the impacts on perception and motivation with mobile learning, virtual teamwork, social and emotional learning, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and coaching. She has presented on these topics at various regional, national, and international conferences, including UPCEA, NUTN, and the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning.

In her free time, Alicia enjoys traveling, photography, sports, coaching, and being a golf mom for her daughter, Danica, and a tennis mom for her daughter, Samantha.