Scholarship

I have broad interests throughout the area of teaching and learning; however, my major areas of interest are: computer-supported collaborative learning, courseware development, and case-based learning. I am interested in the impact of Internet-based technologies on the processes by which people develop, the tools they choose, and the environments for social interaction they create when doing so. I have worked most often – though, not exclusively – with adult educators as my population and schools as my environment.

Recently, most of my work has focused on the use of three-dimensional virtual worlds for learning.  AET Zone, our virtual world for learning developed at ASU, has grown into a significant component of our department's off-campus and online course offerings and has occupied the majority of my research and development efforts since 2001.

Publications

I have published multiple articles in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, papers in reviewed national or international conference proceedings, and presentations at national or international conferences on educational technology, teacher education, and educational research. I have co-authored with students and colleagues, and also published on my own.  I have published in traditional journals, editorial web-based publications, books, newspapers, and professional newsletters.  A paper I co-authored -- Web-based discussions: Building effective electronic communities for preservice technology education-- was awarded Best Telecommunications Paper at the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education in 1998, and was published in 2000 in the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education.

Grants

I have been PI or co-PI on over a dozen grants from from federal, private, and local funding agencies totaling more than $1.1 million. 

At ASU, my work teaching with and developing web-based multimedia cases has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s PT3 program.  I have also received funding to support projects that engage my students in collaborative teaching and design via technology. For example, I co-directed an inquiry-based design project with a colleague in Civil Engineering at Lehigh that provided support for my students in our teacher education program to design computer-based training materials for Lucent Technologies.  A grant from the Alden Trust funded space renovation to support new teaching methods and collaborative partnerships such as the Lehigh University/Moravian Academy (LUMA) project.   The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded my largest grant - $670,000 - for a 2-year project called The Clipper Project.  The Clipper Project was an initiative to provide web-based, college-level courses to high school students, and to measure the institutional and pedagogical effects.

Other scholarship

Since 2004, I have served on the Editorial Review Board for the International Journal on E-Learning.  I also review manuscripts for the National Center for Developmental Education's Journal of Developmental Education.

In 2001,  I submitted a proposal for, and was offered, a Foreign Research Fellowship at the Japanese National Institute for Multimedia Education, sponsored by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.  I did not accept the fellowship, due to scheduling and programmatic conflicts, though I was honored to have been offered the opportunity.  

Additionally, in 1999-2000, I served as the editor of the Courselinks online supplement on Education (since acquired by Thomson Learning).  As the online editor, I wrote a monthly article and maintained a database of useful links and resources for inservice and preservice educators.