Chère Campbell Gibson is Chair of the Graduate
Program of Continuing and Vocational Education at the University of Wisconsin —
Madison. She teaches courses on the adult independent learner, instructional design for
distance learning, and issues in distance education. Her research focuses on the learner
at a distance, with a specific emphasis on persistence and on the types of support that
facilitate learning and completion. In addition, she has designed several award winning
instructional packages, is a past Director of the University of Wisconsin System Extended
Degree Programs, past Chair of the Teaching at a Distance Conference offered annually by
the University of Wisconsin — Madison, and the originator of UW-Madison’s
Certificate of Professional Development in Distance Education.
Contributing authors:
Michael Moore is Academic Director
of the American Center for the Study of Distance Education (ACSDE) at The Pennsylvania
State University. He is the founder and editor of The American Journal of Distance
Education. Since his 1972 theory of distance education — generally regarded as
the first attempt in English to conceptualize and define this field of practice —
Michael has advocated and explained distance education in numerous publications,
presentations, workshops, and seminars throughout the world. From 1996 thorough 1998
Michael has been a visiting scholar and consultant at the World Bank with assignments
to South Africa, Russia, Brazil, and Egypt.
Melody M. Thompson holds both a
master’s and doctoral degree in Adult Education from The Pennsylvania State
University. She was a writer and editor for the American Center for the Study of Distance
Education and is currently Assistant Director of Operations and Evaluation at Penn
State’s World Campus and a faculty member teaching Adult Education in the College of
Education. Melody’s teaching, research, and writing focus on distance education, the
history of adult education, and diversity in adult education. Her most recent publication
(with Michael Moore) is the 1997 Effects of Distance Learning (revised edition).
Elizabeth Burge is a Professor of
Adult Education at the University of New Brunswick in Atlantic Canada. She says she tries
to walk the talk of constructionist and common sense approaches to teaching and learning
in adult and distance mode programs and in her M.Ed. classes, her writing, research and
workshop activity. Liz is the 1997/98 Past President of the Canadian Association for
Distance Education/Association Canadienne de l’education à distance. She has worked
in distance education since 1978, and she led the development of an international group of
women distance educators (WIN).
Irene M. Sanchez is the Bureau
Chief for the Child Care Services Bureau of the New Mexico Children, Youth, and Families
Department. She oversees child care assistance and licensing programs for the State and is
responsible for overseeing a statewide program for the training of child care providers.
She has an earned a doctorate degree in Training and Learning Technologies from the
University of New Mexico and has worked in public service agencies where she has extensive
experience in program administration, staff development and training of professionals and
paraprofessionals, specializing in multicultural education of adult learners.
Charlotte N. (Lani) Gunawardena is
Associate Professor of Distance Education and Instructional Technology in the
Organizational Learning and Instructional Technology Program at the University of New
Mexico. She developed the graduate emphasis area in distance education at the University
of New Mexico and has been active for the past decade in conducting research on distance
education. Her current research interests center around design and evaluation of
constuctivist learning environments facilitated by computer conferencing, social presence
theory, and implications for interaction and communication, and the evaluation of distance
education.
Christine Olgren is Distance
Education Program Manager, Continuing and Vocational Education, University of
Wisconsin-Madison. She is responsible for directing the Distance Education Certificate
Program, the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning, and other professional
development services. An author of over thirty books, articles and research reports in the
field, Chris has worked in the field of distance education since 1977. Her experience
includes program management, program development, instructional design, marketing,
technology assessment, student advising, and instruction via audio, video, and the
Internet.
Terry Anderson is currently the
Director of Academic Technologies for Learning (ATL) at the University of Alberta and is
also an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Extension. His research interests relate to
development and evaluation of WWW support for distance and classroom delivery and in the
use of electronic communication tools to support "virtual" professional
development activities. Terry was the Director of Contact North, a distance education
delivery network in Northern Ontario and he coordinated what was probably the first
"virtual conference" on the Internet, the Bangkok Project, of the International
Council on Distance Education in 1992.
Randy Garrison holds the position
of Dean, in the Faculty of Extension, at the University of Alberta. He previously held the
position of Associate Dean (Research and Development) in the Faculty of Continuing
Education and Director of Distance Education at the University of Calgary. There he
developed a very successful Master’s degree specializing in workplace learning that
was accessible to working professionals globally. His areas of research are related to the
teaching and learning transaction in the context of adult, distance, and higher education.
He has published extensively in these areas.
Daniel Granger is currently the
Director of Distributed Learning and Extended Education at California State University,
Monterey Bay. He has been in distance education for twenty years, previously serving as
the Director of Distance Education at the University of Minnesota and as Director of the
Center for Distance Learning at SUNY Empire State College. He has written and spoken
extensively on distance education from the learner perspective, and he currently serves on
the editorial boards of Open Learning and the Distance Education Report. He
edited the special issue on "Distance Education in North America" of Open
Praxis (Vol. 1, 1997), the journal of the International Council on Distance Education.
Meg Benke has been with Empire
State College since 1990 and connected with distance education since 1983. Her work in
education has focused on the connections between work, employers, and education. In
addition to teaching in the graduate and undergraduate programs, in the areas of adult
educational policy, leadership, human resource development, and training and learning
organizations, Meg also studies outcomes for students in distance learning and the
assessments of prior learning. Since coming to Empire State College, Meg has written and
presented primarily in the areas of learner supports for distance learners and employer
sponsored distance learning.
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