The Learning Design and Leadership concentration has a group of individuals to support you prior to, during, and after your graduate school experience.
LDL Program Leaders and Faculty Advisors
Bill Cope is a Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include theories and practices of pedagogy, cultural and linguistic diversity, and new technologies of representation and communication. His and Mary Kalantzis’ recent research has focused on the development of digital writing and assessment technologies, with the support of a number of major grants from the US Department of Education, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Science Foundation. The result has been the CGScholar multimodal writing and assessment environment.
Mary Kalantzis was from 2006 to 2016 Dean of the College of Education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before this, she was Dean of the Faculty of Education, Language and Community Services at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, and President of the Australian Council of Deans of Education. With Bill Cope, she has co-authored or co-edited: New Learning: Elements of a Science of Education, Cambridge University Press, 2008 (2nd edition, 2012); Ubiquitous Learning, University of Illinois Press, 2009; Towards a Semantic Web: Connecting Knowledge in Academic Research, Elsevier, 2009; Literacies, Cambridge University Press 2012 (2nd edition, 2016); A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies, Palgrave, 2016; and e-Learning Ecologies, Routledge, 2017.
Xinran Zhu is an Assistant Professor in the Learning Design & Leadership and Instructional Design, Technology, & Organization contentrations. She earned her Ph.D. in Learning Sciences and Technologies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2024. Her research interests lie at the intersection of learning sciences, learning analytics, and human-computer interaction. Grounded in research-practice partnerships, she develops pedagogical designs, technological innovations, and empirical understandings of learning in authentic settings.
Dr. Zhu’s recent work involves designing web applications to support computer-supported collaborative learning, conducting computational research to derive actionable insights for educational practice, and investigating the integration of AI tools in augmenting human knowledge creation.
Liam Magee, Dr. Liam Magee is Professor in the Department of Education, Organization, Policy and Leadership in the College of Education. He has worked in areas of urban sustainability, youth resilience, refugee settlement, and digital inclusion, where a consistent motif has been understanding the ambivalent role of technology in developing social equity. His current research examines the impacts of generative AI on social practices, research methods and human learning, with special attention to questions of bias, alignment and cultural production. Dr. Magee holds a PhD from RMIT University, and most recently was Associate Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. He has contributed to more than 100 journal articles, book chapters and reports, and has participated on research teams that have secured more than $4 million in grant funding.
Vania Castro is a Teaching Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She previously held the Werner Baer Post-Doctoral Position at the Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies at the University of Illinois from 2022 to 2023. She developed an innovative framework to support Brazilian teachers in implementing the new curriculum standards at schools. Dr. Castro completed her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, in May 2021. She was a visiting scholar with the CAPES/PrInt program at UIUC in 2019 and 2020 where she developed part of her doctoral studies. Her investigation centered on leveraging mobile devices to provide support to educators and students in underserved regions of Brazil. She was also a Fulbright scholar at Florida State University (FSU) from 2015-2016. Her current research interests include emerging technologies in education, mobile learning, multiliteracies, teacher education, and artificial intelligence.
Stuart L. Mattingly, a recent LDL EdD Grad, is the Doctoral Program Coordinator for the Learning Design & Leadership program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Originally, he is from Louisville, Kentucky but currently lives in Tucson, Arizona with his awesome wife and has a son in college in Los Angeles. His research interests center around authentic assessment, effective online pedagogy, education policy change, and AI in higher education. In addition to teaching, Stuart enjoys flying small aircraft, pottery, cooking, guitar, travel, and home construction projects.
College of Education Online Programs Advisor
Brianna Davis earned her Masters of Education from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in Learning Design and Leadership in 2021. She currently serves as the College of Education Online Programs Advisor. This position supports only online students across all College of Education online programs. We may occasionally refer you to Brianna for certain questions or requests.
LDL Program Teaching Assistants
LDL Courses:
Akash Kumar Saini is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in the Learning Design and Leadership Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research and practice focus on developing, designing, exploring, and testing digital tools (such as Virtual Reality, Games, etc.) to facilitate learning and provide specialized instructions, training, and guidance for integrating such technologies in educational practices. He is also very keen to investigate the impact of new media and technology (especially Virtual and Augmented Reality) on the various domains of learning and explore the impact and benefits of visualizing mathematical concepts using Augmented Reality in school education.
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