Stephen Carson

The OpenFiction Project, MIT OpenCourseWare

Stephen Carson is External Relations Director for MIT OpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu). His responsibilities include sustainability initiatives; strategic partnerships with other organizations; MIT OCW's support of opencourseware projects at other institutions; special projects in priority areas; and project evaluation. Stephen is also currently serving as the first president of the OpenCourseWare Consortium. Stephen has previously served in numerous other positions on the senior management and publication teams for MIT OCW. In the early stages of the program, Stephen developed a mission-critical workflow tracking database still in use; implemented a department liaison program that remains OCW's key interface with academic departments; and managed the publication of 100 of the first 500 courses to be published on the site. Prior to joining the MIT OCW team, Stephen served as Associate Director of Emerson College's Division of Continuing Education in Boston, where - in addition to managing core academic activities of the division - he developed and taught Emerson's first asynchronous, Web-based distance learning course. Stephen earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, and taught creative and expository writing there for five years.

Dr. David Neville

Currently pursuing an interdisciplinary software development project that will program a 3D digital game-based learning environment for the teaching of the German language, vocabulary, and culture to beginning university students. Specifically, the team will develop a graphic adventure game requiring students to navigate a virtual German train station while meeting specific instructional goals such as purchasing a train ticket, locating the appropriate track, making sense of arrival and departure tables, and interacting with non-player characters (NPCs). The DigiBahn Project research blog can be found at http://digibahn.blogspot.com

David O. Neville is assistant professor of German Language and Literature and Director of Language Learning Technologies at Elon University. He holds a Ph.D. in German Language and Literature, with an emphasis in Medieval Studies, from Washington University in St. Louis, and a M.S. in Instructional Technology from Utah State University.

Eve Gray

International Policy Fellowship, Open Society, Budapest, Open Information Group: Sustainability Models for Open Access Social Science Research Publication in Africa: Policy and Practice, The project aims to examine research policy in South Africa and map its impact on the publication and dissemination of research. An investigation of the impact of research dissemination will in turn lead to an evaluation of the effectiveness of the delivery of development goals articulated in national and institutional research policy., Open Access publication will be explored as a potential way of overcoming the economic, geographical, and political barriers to research publication in and out of Africa. Given the general level of impoverishment of African universities and shortfalls in ICT infrastructure, the project will investigate the policy interventions and practical strategies that might enhance the sustainability of effective and high-quality research dissemination in Africa and the advocacy programmes that would be needed to get buy-in from policy-makers and the scholarly community for the expansion of Open Access scholarly publishing programmes.

Eve Gray is an International Policy Fellow with the Open Society Institute, Budapest in the Open Information Working Group. She is based in Cape Town and is affiliated to the Centre for Educational Technology, University of Cape Town, as an Honorary Research Associate.