Senior Fellow for Open Education

I’m humbled and very excited to announce that, as of today, I am the Senior Fellow for Open Education at the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, also known as Digital Promise. I’ll post more detail on exactly what this means later this week. FAQ: No, I’m not leaving BYU; I’ll be acting in this role in addition to my responsibilities at BYU.

In the meantime, here’s the SL Tribune story and the text of the article from the McKay School News:

Dr. David Wiley, an associate professor in the Department of Instructional Psychology & Technology at Brigham Young University, today begins an appointment as Senior Fellow for Open Education with Digital Promise, a new national center created by Congress to research, develop, and scale up technologies that can transform the way teachers teach and students learn. Wiley will advise the center as it develops policy recommendations through a series of white papers and works to establish a broader Digital Promise Fellows program.

In addition to his own teaching and research, Wiley serves as Associate Director for Research in the Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling, housed in the BYU McKay School of Education, and as director of the open education research group. He has previously held visiting or fellowship positions at prestigious institutions including the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, the Open University of the UK, and the Open University of the Netherlands.

Digital Promise Executive Director Adam Frankel commented on Wiley’s appointment, “I’m incredibly excited about David’s appointment as a Digital Promise Senior Fellow for Open Education. David is one of America’s most innovative thinkers on the future of learning. His cutting-edge work is helping America find ways of cutting costs while delivering a world-class education to all our students. Harnessing the promise of technology to drive better results is David’s trademark, and it’s what Digital Promise is all about.”

Wiley has specific goals for his work, most of which will focus on the roles of federal and state education agencies in solving sector-wide problems in education. “I’ll be working to identify what these agencies can do to increase and accelerate the development and distribution of highly effective educational resources, particularly those with open licenses, thereby reducing costs.” Wiley added, “As a nation we have to think about education more expansively, including both formal and informal learning. Leveraging technology is one of the key ways to enable this enlarged thinking.”

McKay School Dean K. Richard Young remarked, “David’s commitment to the improvement of teaching and learning, coupled with his passion to insure access to knowledge for all, will benefit Digital Promise as well as continuing to benefit the McKay School of Education at BYU.” Wiley agrees, saying his work for Digital Promise will be closely related to what he has previously accomplished at the McKay School. “My research at BYU focuses on issues of affordability and effectiveness, through exploring open licenses and the new pedagogical and financial opportunities these licenses afford.”

Congress authorized Digital Promise, formally titled the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, in 2008. Digital Promise aims to support research about learning technologies similar to ways that the National Institutes of Health support health research and the Department of Energy supports energy research. Digital Promise is bringing schools, entrepreneurs, and researchers together to capture the learning opportunities of the 21st century.

For more information, please contact David Wiley at 801-8229211 or [email protected] or Digital Promise Executive Director Adam Frankel at 202-833-7433 or [email protected].