Speaker: Erin DeSilva

Erin DeSilva is an Instructional Technology Specialist at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, providing outreach and training to the WPI community working in the campus-based, blended and distance learning settings. She supports the use of academic and instructional technologies including: student response systems, the learning management system, multimedia projects, lecture capturing and electronic classroom tools. Erin is currently pursuing an Ed.M. in Educational Media and Technology at Boston University, holds a B.S. from Simmons College, and has worked in science and technology education at the Museum of Science, Boston and a PBS affiliate in Toledo, Ohio.

Speaker: Karen Kuralt

Karen Kuralt is an associate professor of rhetoric and writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she has taught since 2000. Her professional research is in collaborative writing pedagogy, and all of her writing courses involve collaborative processes from brainstorming to peer review to co-authoring. One of these courses, Working with Writers, is taught as a five-week collaborative writing course entirely online, in which the students complete two major collaborative projects using a wide range of technologies — and never meet in person at any point. She also teaches online courses in document design, technical communication theory, and indexing. Professor Kuralt is the graduate coordinator for UALR’s MA program in Professional and Technical Writing; she also works as a science writing consultant for several environmental and toxicology organizations in the state of Arkansas.

Speaker: Lauren Mathews

Lauren Mathews is an associate professor of biology at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she has taught since 2003. Her professional research in biology is in evolutionary ecology and environmental biology, and combines the field-based approaches with molecular genetic methods. This research is student-driven, with her undergraduate researchers generating all of the best ideas, experiments, and insights that originate in her laboratory. Professor Mathews also serves on the steering committee of WPI’s Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program, and is active in the university’s Global Perspectives Program, serving as a faculty advisor at several global project centers, and serving as director of WPI’s Puerto Rico Project Center. In the last few years, Professor Mathews has become increasingly concerned at her own technological ignorance, and in response, has begun integrating technological tools in her classroom teaching and advising of undergraduate research.