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eLearn Magazine is where e-learning professionals turn to produce more innovative and effective online education and training. We strive to be the leading source of high-quality information on technology for corporate training and higher education.
Don Norman calls himself a "user advocate." Business Week calls him a "cantankerous visionary"—cantankerous in his quest for excellence. Dr. Norman is president of Unext Learning Systems, a division of Unext.com, a distance education company located just north of Chicago. He is also cofounder of the Nielsen Norman Group, an executive consulting firm that helps companies produce human-centered products and services. In this role, he serves on the advisory boards of numerous companies.
Norman brings a unique mix of the social sciences and engineering to bear on everyday products: he is a strong advocate of human-centered design and simplicity. He has served as an executive at Hewlett Packard and vice president in charge of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple. He is a professor emeritus at the University of California-San Diego, where he was founding chair of the Department of Cognitive Science and chair of the Department of Psychology. He was one of the founders of the Cognitive Science Society and has been chair of the society and editor of its journal, Cognitive Science. He is a fellow of the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society, the American Psychological Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Born in Montreal, Quebec, Stephen Downes lived and worked across Canada before joining the National Research Council as a senior researcher in 2001. Currently based in Moncton, New Brunswick at the Institute for Information Technology's e-Learning Research Group, Stephen has become a leading voice in the areas of learning objects and metadata, as well as the emerging fields of blogs in education and content syndication.
He is perhaps best known for his daily research newsletter OLDaily. His work also includes the development of educational content syndication systems, such as Edu_RSS and DLORN, and the design of a digital rights management system for learning resources. Stephen is also frequently on the road giving seminars and lectures about online learning, including the notable Buntine Oration delivered in Perth, Australia, in 2004.
Mark Notess conducts user research and manages software development for the Indiana University Digital Library Program. The Variations digital music library has been his primary focus for several years. Mark follows developments in learning management systems closely, having been program manager for a worldwide learning portal project at Agilent Technologies and more recently having worked on the Sakaibrary project. Prior to working at Indiana University, Mark was Director of User Experience at Unext, an online higher education company, where he enjoyed working with Don Norman. He also spent 11 years in software startup development and management roles at Hewlett-Packard. He holds a Ph.D. in Instructional Systems Technology from Indiana University and consults on education-focused technology topics through Very There Consulting.
Janet Clarey is a senior researcher and analyst with Brandon Hall Research, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Her background is in corporate learning and development, for which she has worked on curriculum development, instructional design, and learning technology implementations. In her current role, she researches and writes about e-learning topics and trends, consults with businesses, authors a blog, and co-authors a daily newsletter, Workplace Learning Today. Janet has led face-to-face workshops about e-learning throughout the U.S. and facilitates online workshops for a global audience. She also leads Brandon Hall Research's social media strategy and online communities, and attends graduate school at Syracuse University in the Instructional Design Development and Evaluation program, where she is working on her Ph.D. Janet lives in New York state with her husband and three children and works as part of a virtual team from a home office.
Clark Quinn leads learning system design through Quinnovation, providing strategic solutions to Fortune 500, education, government, and not-for-profit organizations. He earned his Ph.D. in applied cognitive science from the University of California, San Diego, and has led the design of mobile, performance support, serious games, online learning, and adaptive learning systems. He's an internationally known speaker and author, with a book and numerous articles and chapters. He has held management positions at Knowledge Universe Interactive Studio, Open Net, and Access CMC, and academic positions at the University of New South Wales, the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center, and San Diego State University's Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education.
Hend Suliman Al-Khalifa is an assistant professor at the Information Technology Department, CCIS, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She received her MSc degree in Information Systems (2001) from King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA, and her PhD degree in Computer Science (2007) from Southampton University, U.K. Al-Khalifa has participated with more than 45 research papers in symposiums, workshops, and conferences and has published many journal articles. Since 1999, she has also worked as a technology writer in Al-Riyadh Arabic daily newspaper, and she moderates an Arabic blog called tech2click.net, which contains information about new trends and technologies in e-learning and online. Her areas of interest include web technologies (semantic Web/Web 2.0), technology enhanced learning (e-learning, adaptive hypermedia), computers for people with special needs, and Arabic language and computers.
Dr. Allison Rossett is professor emerita of educational technology at San Diego State University, as well as a consultant to organizations seeking to leverage technology for learning and performance. She was selected as a Distinguished Fellow of the Naval Education and Training Learning Strategies Consortium, and has been recognized by both ASTD and ISPI for contributions to thought and practice in workplace learning. Originally from New York, and a former Ping-Pong champion—emphasis on "former"—she now teaches classes, offers keynotes, and conducts studies on readiness for technology-based learning, with a focus on the professional development of instructional designers and technologists. Recently, she updated her award-winning book, First Things Fast: A Handbook for Performance Analysis, 2nd edition. In 2007 she co-authored Job Aids and Performance Support: Moving from Knowledge in the Classroom to Knowledge Everywhere. She also edited The ASTD E-learning Handbook, published by McGraw-Hill, and co-authored Beyond the Podium: Delivering Training and Performance to a Digital World. Rossett serves on boards for The eLearning Guild, Chief Learning Officer magazine, and eLearning for Kids.
Saul Carliner is an associate professor with the graduate program in educational technology at Concordia University in Montreal. He also has extensive experience consulting on workplace learning and communication in both the business and government sectors. Carliner has written eight books, including the E-Learning Handbook: Past Promises, Present Challenges (with Patti Shank). He is a Certified Training and Development Professional (through the Canadian Society for Training and Development), a national board member of the Canadian Society for Training and Development, a past Research Fellow of the American Society for Training and Development, and a fellow and past international president of the Society for Technical Communication. He holds a PhD in instructional technology from Georgia State University.
Karl M. Kapp, Ed.D., is a professor of instructional technology at Bloomsburg University, and an expert on the convergence of learning, technology, and business operations. Kapp helped start Bloomsburg's online e-learning developer's certificate. As assistant director of the university's Institute for Interactive Technologies , Kapp helps government, corporate, and nonprofit organizations-such as the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, L'OREAL, Kellogg's, Sovereign Bank, and several pharmaceutical firms-leverage learning technologies to increase employee productivity and organizational profitability. He is author of four books including, Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning, and Learning in 3D: Adding a New Dimension to Enterprise Learning and Collaboration (2010). As the father of two gamers, he also keeps busy with the latest gadgets, games, and gizmos.
Rovy Branon leads learning technology research and development as the executive director of the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Lab at the University of Wisconsin Extension in Madison. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the Instructional Systems Technology department at Indiana University. Prior to his appointment with UW, he led an instructional design team at Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis. He has more than 18 years of instructional media and learning technology development experience in corporate, higher education, and not-for-profit settings. Branon holds a PhD from Indiana University with a major in instructional systems technology and a minor in human-computer interaction. He is a regular speaker at many training and education conferences covering a range of topics including: learning technology, training organization effectiveness, and instructional design trends.
eLearn Editors
Lisa Gualtieri is editor-in-chief of eLearn Magazine. She is adjunct clinical professor in the Health Communication Program at Tufts University School of Medicine where she teaches Online Consumer Health and Web Strategies for Health Communication. In addition, Lisa is a consultant who specializes in health and education; this includes being project manager for Plimoth Plantation's award-winning Online Learning Center, "You Are the Historian: Investigating the First Thanksgiving" and conducting a program evaluation for Goucher College's master's degree in Historic Preservation. Lisa has keynoted at numerous conferences and has published extensively. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard University.
Roger C. Schank, eLearn Magazine's contributing editor and opinion columnist, is one of the world's leading researchers in AI, learning theory, cognitive science, and the building of virtual learning environments. He is President and CEO of Socratic Arts, a company whose goal is to design and implement low-cost, story-based learning by doing curricula in schools, universities, and corporations. One of Roger's earliest career achievements was becoming the first person to get computers to be able to process typewritten, everyday English language sentences.
Jill Duffy, who represents eLearnMag.org on Twitter is senior editor at ACM, for eLearn, Ubiquity, and Crossroads, the student magazine of the ACM. She spent five years as a writer and editor in the video game development sector, covering the art, science, and business of the field, and in 2006 was named one of the 100 most influential women in the game industry. Her work has appeared in Popular Science, The Examiner newspaper in San Francisco, Game Developer magazine, olive magazine (a BBC publication), Gamasutra.com, Intelligent Enterprise magazine, GameCareerGuide.com, and DigitalTrends.com. Before her career turned to technology, she worked for the Journal of Chemical Physics at the American Institute of Physics. She is also an avid food writer.
Denise Doig is Managing Editor, Track II Magazines, at ACM, including interactions and netWorker magazines. Most recently, she was the Managing Editor at trade publisher Outsourcing Today, providing editorial and production support for three titles. She has experience in technical writing and book publicity and marketing. Denise holds a BSE from Princeton University and a certificate from the Columbia University Publishing Course. She also works as a freelance writer.
