Carlos L. M. Contreras earned a Ph.D. in differential psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been teaching online, exclusively, since 2000. He currently teaches undergraduate level classes at Saint Leo University and graduate level classes at Capella University. In addition to his regular teaching duties, he has created a free, online, noncredit class whose focus is confirmatory factor analysis. His research interests are distance learning and applications of confirmatory factor analysis.
Rita L. Dobbs is an assistant professor in the Department of Technology at The University of Texas at Tyler. She completed her doctorate in educational human resource development at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX. Her master of science and bachelor of science degrees were completed at Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas. Dobbs has more than 20 years of teaching experience at the graduate, undergraduate, and K-12 levels. She has served as an administrator in the Texas public schools and is a partner in Research Consultants, her consulting firm. Before joining the faculty of the Department of Technology, Dobbs worked extensively with distance learning projects and grant projects. She has authored over $3 million in distance learning grants. She has presented at international and national conferences on the subject of distance learning. Recently, she was awarded the top honor, the Pillar Award, from the International TeleCon Association for her distance learning product development.
Bruce L. Edwards is professor of English and Associate Dean for Distance Education and International Programs at Bowling Green State University (Ohio), where he has been a faculty member for 23 years. Having taught in computer-mediated communication environments since the late 1980s, he recently has been overseeing the development of Web-based credit programs and certificates at BGSU from within the Office of Continuing & Extended Education. When he returned from a year-long Fulbright Fellowship (1999-2000) in Nairobi, Kenya, he began seeking ways to build collaborative curricula and degree programs between East African universities and his home campus. He is the recent recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Grant (2004-05), which will permit him to investigate the possibility of inaugurating distance education programs between the Open University of Tanzania and Bowling Green State University. He is the author of Processing Words (Prentice-Hall, 1988), one of the first writing textbooks designed for the computer-mediated classroom, and regularly teaches an online course focused on the life and works of Anglo-Irish writer, C. S. Lewis.
Johnette Moody teaches in the Department of Computer & Information Science at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, Arkansas. Moody is pursuing a DBA in business with emphasis in information systems from the University of Sarasota/Argosy University. Moody's interests include distance education and information security.
Ross A. Perkins is a postdoctoral fellow in Virginia Tech's Center for Instructional Technology Solutions in Industry and Education (CITSIE). He is the project manager for the Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to use Technology (PT3) grant in the College of Liberal Arts & Human Resources. He also assists with the implementation of a USAID-funded grant that partners Virginia Tech with a university in Malawi, Africa. Additionally, Perkins serves as the Coordinator of Electronic Communications for the Virginia Society for Technology in Education. His general area of research focuses on contextual implications of instructional technology and design.
Sorel Reisman is a professor of information systems in the College of Business at California State University, Fullerton, and is the university's academic technology coordinator. He has served as special consultant on academic technology services in the California State University Office of the Chancellor, and works with the management team of the MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching) Project. He is a member of IRMA and a senior editor of Cases in Information Technology. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society (CS) and a member of the CS Publications Board and the Electronic Products and Services Board. He has been on the editorial boards of IEEE Multimedia and IEEE Software, and is currently a member of the editorial board and columnist on the magazine ITPro. Reisman teaches e-commerce, information systems management, and information systems development. His research interests are multimedia computing, information systems management, digital libraries, electronic communities, and distance learning systems. He has presented and published numerous articles on information systems and editor of the books, Multimedia Computing: Preparing for the 21st Century (1992), and Electronic Learning Communities —Current Issues and Best Practices (2003).
Alaa Sadik is a lecturer in educational technology in the Department of Curricula and Instruction, Faculty of Education, South Valley University, Egypt. He received his Ph.D. in educational technology from Institute for Learning, the University of Hull, UK, in 2002. He teaches courses in computer-based instruction and online learning for pre-service and inservice teachers and has published numerous papers in this area.
Barry Schlegel is an assistant professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)-School of Public Health, Health Education and Behavioral Science Department and member of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute. For 8 of the 15 years he has been at UMDNJ, he was associate director of a continuing education center that delivered face-to-face, satellite and Web-based short courses in environmental and occupational safety and health. He has an Ed.D. in adult and continuing education from Rutgers University focusing on interactivity in online distance learning for his dissertation. He has been the Academic Distance Learning Coordinator for the School of Public Health for 4 years and has been involved in developing distance learning courses and teaching courses on distance learning. In addition, he is the webmaster for the School of Public Health.
Consuelo L. Waight is an assistant professor of Training and Development at the University of Houston. Waight is presently using an experiential approach to teach design and management of e-learning. Her research areas are the role of human resource development in mergers and acquisitions and the design and management of e-learning. She received her Ph.D. and masters in human resource development from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her Bachelors in English Education from the University of Belize. While at the University of Illinois, she worked with the Knowledge and Learning Systems Group at the National Center for Supercomputing Application in the area of e-learning. Waight has also done several international consulting projects relating to human resource development in Central America, Caribbean, Asia-Pacific, and Africa.
Tim L. Wentling is a professor of information science and a senior research scientist in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Wentling holds a Ph.D. in education and an MBA from the University of Illinois, and a master of science in educational psychology from the University of Wisconsin. Wentling is the leader of the Knowledge and Learning Systems Group at NCSA where he heads a team of cross-disciplinary faculty, post docs, and graduate students. His current work is focused on the integration of e-learning and knowledge management systems. He has recently directed research efforts that have focused on the status of e-learning in major corporations and in higher education. He has codirected the design, development and implementation of an online master's degree program for human resource development professionals. He has also been involved in e-learning projects with the World Bank, Asian Institute of Technology, University of Sao Paulo, and other universities.
Pedro A. Willging is a graduate research assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he is working on his Ph.D. in online instruction. He is also a professor at the University of La Pampa (Argentina) where he is teaching an online undergraduate course.
