J Patrick

Biography

I joined the faculty of Athabasca University's Master of Distance Education program in 1996, after spending the previous 5 years as an account manager and regional manager with TRO Learning. (TRO's product is the PLATO computer-assisted learning system.) Before that I was a high school teacher in Manitoba, and for 20 years was with Alberta Advanced Education, mostly at the Alberta Vocational College (AVC) in Edmonton. At AVC I taught in the English and ESL programs, spent five years as Chairman of the Adult Basic Education (ABE) department, and was Director of Research for six years. Along the way, I also spent a year in the Alberta Department of Advanced Education, did some interesting private consulting in Western Canada and the NWT, and taught continuing education classes to adults at Grant MacEwan College and the Edmonton Public Schools Continuing Education Centre.   

Research Interest

My current research interests include the relationship between technology and productivity, and what constitutes "best" (or even good) practice where technology is used for interaction. I have been working on an approach for analyzing CMC interaction for some time, which I hope will produce some principles for moderators (see below for papers on this topic). I have an ongoing interest in adult development programming (adult basic education, literacy, and English as a Second Language)