I am a Professor with the Learning Sciences Program, Research Scientist with the Center for Research on Learning and Technology, Senior Fellow at the IU Center for Applied Cybersecurity, and Affiliated Faculty with IU Cognitive Science program. I completed my Ph.D. in Psychology at Vanderbilt University and completed a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the ETS Center for Performance Assessment.

I use theories and methods from the Learning Sciences to uncover new solutions to enduring challenges in motivating, assessing, and recognizing learning, mostly using cutting-edge technologies. I started teaching online in 2009 and have been continually revising an approach that is based on situative theories of cognition. I have been deeply involved in research of Open Badges and other forms of web-enabled credentials since 2011. I have been collaborating very closely with the fully online Indiana University High School since 2013. My research has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, the US National Science Foundation, Google, the US Department of Education, and Indiana University.

I am currently (2019-2021) am a co-PI on a $1.5M NSF grant in collaboration with BYU and the University of Maryland. We are combining a new socio-constructivist innovation called Playable Case Studies with the instruction and assessment strategies that emerged in my research of online instruction.