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About
Kurt Rowley, Ph.D.
I am an instructional system designer with a background in information
technology and educational research. My career began with work as an intern for the Securities and Exchange
Commission in Washington, D.C. in 1982. Discovering an interest in
the emerging microcomputer phenomenon I took a job as a computer
programmer and completed a year-long certification course using IBM Cobol
for the banking industry. I worked as an IT consultant, built up
a small software business, and spent
several years as an adjunct college instructor teaching programming and
business courses.
After more than 10 years in information technology I returned to graduate school and earned a Ph.D. in Instructional
Systems from Florida State University (1995), with a focus on
educational systems design and needs assessment. I then worked for three years as a research associate of the
U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Brooks AFB, Texas, where I designed and tested a computer-based tutoring system to teach writing
skills. The tutoring system produced significant performance
gains among high school students (see resume for study references), and has been used by the Department of
Labor's Job Corps to help student prepare for the GED exam. The
system was marketed to schools for several years by Carnegie Learning
Corporation and Apangea Learning (Pittsburgh, PA).
In 1999 I became the lead instructional designer
for Defense Acquisition University's $2 million development program for the Intermediate Systems Acquisition
Course (Ft. Belvoir, Virginia). The course included 40 hours of online
Flash-based multimedia courseware blended with 40 hours of classroom
instruction. The course covered 11 separate technical and
financial disciplines and helped prepare students for careers in defense
systems acquisition. The course utilized an innovative 'story-based'
instructional strategy and became an example of blended e-learning in a
large, high-stakes course (see an article
about the course). Over 20,000 military acquisition
professionals have successfully completed the course, and an additional
5,000 per year will continue taking this certification course.
In 2001 my small research business won the first of two Small
Business Innovation Research awards from the Office of Naval Research,
totaling $850,000. The awards allowed me to direct and conduct a
study of effective system design methods for developing
instructional courseware. I also designed and developed a
performance support tool based on the study results.
The tool was intended for use by non-expert design team members, such as
subject-matter experts. The team conducted several additional inquiries utilizing
cognitive task analysis procedures to determine the nature of the
process followed by the expert designers. The result was an Expert
Design Method. After trying out the method with an example
Navy Reserve course, we developed a training and support system for
instructional designers, the Courseware
Designer Support Tool (CDST). The CDST is a software product
that supports design teams through the use of job aids, worksheets,
advice, instructional modules, a design database, and a rapid prototype
and evaluation system for emerging designs.
Here is a printable
version of my resume (pdf). Here
is a list
of my publications and presentations.
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