Dr. Moon-Heum Cho was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure at Syracuse University (SU), which was announced during the 2021 SU Commencement weekend. On behalf of the IDD&E faculty and students, I am thrilled to extend congratulations to Dr. Cho on this well-deserved recognition and promotion. Dr. Cho joined IDD&E faculty in Fall 2018. Over the years, he has been making remarkable contributions to the profession through his impactful research, exceptional teaching and advising, and outstanding service. His professional activities will continue to bring prestige to IDD&E, the School of Education, and to Syracuse University. After obtaining his Ph.D. in Information Science and Learning Technologies from the University of Missouri-Columbia (2008), Dr. Cho served an Assistant Professor at Kent State University (Ohio, U.S.) and then as an Associate Professor at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul (South Korea).
Jing Lei, IDD&E Department Chair
By Yuri Pavlov | IDD&E doctoral student (Belarus)
Dr. Moon-Heum Cho is known for his comprehensive research of learners’ self-regulation. He explains what the tenure status means for his career as an instructor and a scholar-practitioner. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why did you want tenure at Syracuse University?
Our IDD&E program, and Syracuse University in general, has excellent reputation worldwide. There is a long history of instructional design (I.D.) at Syracuse, and it will be an honor to work here alongside great and internationally recognized colleagues.
How will an associate professorship and tenure help your career?
This recent academic credential helps me stay even more dedicated to working with the School of Education students and making sure the IDD&E program thrives. I also want to maximize my impact on the I.D. field through scholarly activity, and SU has superb infrastructure for that. This is relevant when applying for grants such as N.S.F., because one requirement in getting a national grant is that the principal investigator’s (P.I.) institution can adequately support research work. Finally, it contributes to my reputation among colleagues in my field.
Has your research changed since you came to Syracuse University three years ago?
Prior to SU, I’ve been heavily working on student self-regulation in the field of technology-mediated learning environment, including online learning. Here I’ve began expanding my research interests to areas such as STEM. One of the projects I’m currently working is gamified self-regulation for a middle school math course in Solvay School District (New York, U.S.) with a colleague from the Syracuse University Mathematics Education Department. I want to test if a gamified mobile application enhances students’ ability to solve math problems. Another project has been recently funded by the N.S.F. in which Dr. Jing Lei serves as a Co-P.I. and I serve as an outside evaluator. We want to see if blockchain-based lab curriculum improves computer science students’ understanding of programming. Essentially, I want to implement practical interventions in our community in addition to my theoretical contributions to the I.D. field.
What is your success formula for getting tenured?
Professional service, teaching, and scholarly work. In different institutions and even schools within an institution there may be different criteria for tenure promotion, but one criterion is probably universal—your clear and genuine interest in your topic. For doctoral students, their dissertation lays the foundation for their future journeys as scholars. It’s important to choose the right dissertation topic, fully dedicate one’s energy to it, and this will establish the groundwork for becoming a scholar in one’s field. Oftentimes people think the success in getting tenured is the number of publications.* Publications are important, but there is no fixed number of required printed works that will guarantee tenure promotion. One advice I want to give doctoral students is explore thoroughly your research interest so that it provides the basis for you as a future academician.
Now that you are ever more committed to research and that you’re part of the recent N.S.F. grant you’ve mentioned, should students still expect you to invest your time in them?
Absolutely. I will continue teaching all the same courses that I have been teaching so far.1 In terms of research work, whatever project we do as faculty here in IDD&E, students can always work with us, they just need to voice their interests. As for the N.S.F. grant, it is an opportunity for students to get involved. Although I’m serving as an evaluator on it, I want to use it as an authentic project in my IDE 641 and IDE 741 evaluation sequence courses. N.S.F. requires outside evaluators to submit an annual report to them, so students may have an opportunity to work with a real client in a real field—if they want. Remember, everything a student does here at SU will be connected to whatever position or role that student will have in the future. Naturally, with modifications depending on cultural and situational constraints, but nonetheless students’ work in the present will share commonalities with their work after graduation. I experienced it myself. I worked in South Korea for four years, and I brought many skills over there that I had learned in the U.S. Now I work in Syracuse, and I am applying I.D. skills and knowledge that I’ve learned in the Korean context to my evaluation courses here at SU.
What was your and your family’s reactions when your tenure and promotion were announced?
Of course, I was overjoyed, so I immediately shared the good news with family in the U.S. and South Korea. I also contacted my close colleagues at SU and in my former institutions. Everyone was happy and congratulated me, complimenting my dedication to the I.D. field. It was a delightful moment.
* Note. Dr. Moon-Heum Cho publishes, on average, 4 scholarly peer-reviewed articles annually.
1 Dr. Moon-Heum Cho teaches IDE 611 Technologies for Instructional Settings, IDE 641 Techniques in Educational Evaluation, IDE 741 Concepts and Issues in Educational Evaluation, IDE 742 Introduction to Survey Research, and IDE 841 The Nature and Design of Inquiry.
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