Shannon Donnally Quinn

(she/her; она/её)

sdquinn@msu.edu
(517) 884-6335

B480 Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Rd
East Lansing, MI 48824

FacultyLinguistics, Languages, and Cultures

Associate Professor
Russian

Curriculum Vitae

Biography

Ph.D., M.A., Slavic Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison; M.Ed., Instructional Design, University of Massachusetts-Boston; B.A., Russian, Oberlin CollegeShannon Donnally Quinn (Spasova) is an Associate Professor of Russian and Technology Specialist. She received her Ph.D at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where her dissertation research was on Russian and Soviet science fiction. Her ongoing teaching and research interests include instructional technology in language teaching, blended learning, and curricular design, and she completed a second Master’s degree in instructional design in 2015. Shannon has also taught at Middlebury College’s School of Russian, Dalhousie University, for the University of Minnesota’s CARLA/STARTALK courses, Michigan State’s Online Language Teaching program, and has worked as part of the RAILS project (an award-winning project that targeted advanced listening skills in students of Russian) and for Learning Support Services (a group that assists instructors in the use of technology in teaching). She serves on the board of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association, as well as in the capacity of webinar coordinator of the International Association for Language Learning Technology and as the Editor-in-Chief of The FLTMAG. Shannon is co-author with Anna Tumarkin of the online Open Educational Resource Diverse Russian: A Multicultural Exploration.

Projects


Diverse Russian

With Anna Tumarkin from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, this OER project funded by the Less Commonly Taught Languages Initiative aims to diversify the curriculum in Russian by highlighting the diversity of Russian-speaking communities around the world.

LLC Commons: Open Resources for Online Teaching in Slavic

With Liudmila Klimanova from the University of Arizona, this site provides open online lessons available for teachers and learners of Russian. This site is supported by the Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language, and Literacy at the University of Arizona.

RAILS: Russian Advanced Interactive Listening Series

This is a project hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and originally funded by the Department of Education which provides lessons focusing on helping intermediate-level students of Russian develop their listening proficiency. The lessons are based on documentary films and interviews with experts on various topics. In 2022, the lessons were updated and new lessons began to be created based on interviews with experts from Kazakhstan.

Middlebury School of Russian – Pre-immersion and Heritage Learners sites

This project created materials to help students prepare for the immersion context at Middlebury’s School of Russian and materials for heritage learners of Russian.

Transformative Pedagogy project "Transformative Success in Study Abroad"

This project is developing curriculum to help students prepare for success in study abroad.

Media Mentions

Awards and Honors

Courses

Russian 101: Elementary Russian I

Russian 102: Elementary Russian II

Russian 201: Second Year Russian I

Russian 202: Second Year Russian II

Russian 241: Russian and Slavic Folklore, Fairy Tales, and Folk Traditions

Russian 491: Conversation

IAH 206: Russian and Eastern European Science Fiction

Fundamentals of Online Language Teaching

Creating Engaging Materials

Publications

Quinn, S. D., & Tumarkin, A. (2024). Diverse Russian: A Multicultural Exploration. https://wisc.pb.unizin.org/diverserussian/ Co-editor, with Karen Evans-Romaine, Symposium: Rethinking Pedagogical Practices at the Nexus of Pandemic and War: Technology, Access, Equity, Inclusion, and Representation in our Field, Slavic and East European Journal, 67(4).

Guest editor, with Liudmila Klimanova and Jason Merrill, Russian Language Journal special issue “COVID-19 and Online Teaching Pedagogy in the Times of a Global Crisis: Research, Practices, and Solutions, Volume 71, No. 2 (18 articles) – https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/rlj/vol71/iss2/, 2021

Schmoll, S., Cornell, C., Wolff, L., Kronenberg, F., & Quinn, S. D. (2023). Take your students to the stars in the target language. The FLTMAG, November 2023. https://fltmag.com/planetarium-target-language/

Quinn, S. D. & Poole, F. (2023). DALL·E: An “intelligent” illustrator for your language classroom. The FLTMAG, March 2023. https://fltmag.com/dall%c2%b7e/

Quinn, S. D. (2021) How I am revising my curriculum based on e-learning instructional design principles. The FLTMAG, November 2021. https://fltmag.com/revising-curriculum-elearning-principles/ 

Spasova, S., & Welsh, K. (2020). Mixing it up with blended learning. The Art of Teaching Russian, 405-430.

Gacs, A., Goertler, S., & Spasova, S. (2020). Planned online language education versus crisis-prompted online language teaching: Lessons for the future. Foreign Language Annals, 53(2), 380-392. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12460.

University News

Faculty Promotions for 2022
Published December 1, 2022 in College of Arts & Letters
The College of Arts & Letters is pleased to recognize the faculty members who recently were promoted to full professor, associate professor, or associate professor-fixed term. Full Professor…Read now »