Murray Goldberg (born October 1962) is a noted Canadian educational technologist and a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Goldberg is best known for being the founder of the elearning companies WebCT, Brainify, Silicon Chalk, AssociCom, Marine Learning Systems and most recently SkillGrader. Goldberg was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and raised in Edmonton. He moved to British Columbia to attend the University of Victoria in 1980. Murray graduated from UVic in 1985 and then went on to earn an MSc from the University of British Columbia. In 2004 he was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from the Southern Cross University. [1] Murray serves as director for various companies, sits on the board of trustees of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont California, is a mentor at the GSV Labs tech incubator in Redwood City California, and is a frequent consultant and speaker on the future of eLearning. Murray is also the chair of the British Columbia chapter of the Manning Innovation Awards.
Murray began as a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at UBC in 1993 and was awarded tenure there in 1998. [2] In 1994, his first year as a faculty member at UBC, Goldberg won the Killiam Teaching Prize at UBC. [3] Goldberg took a leave of absence from UBC in 1998 to lead WebCT full-time. [4]
In 1995, as a UBC faculty member, Goldberg was researching the effectiveness of Web-Based learning environments. [5] [6] Goldberg found that the experience of building the courses for this experimentation was sufficiently time consuming and expensive that he decided to create a platform to enable the simple and rapid creation of web-based learning environments, [7] [8] WebCT. WebCT was widely accepted as a catalyst in the worldwide boom of on-line learning that accelerated beginning in 1997. [9] By November, 2000 WebCT was purportedly serving 6 million students in 57 countries, [9] and by late 2001, 10 million students in 80 countries at 2250 universities and colleges. [10] In 1999, Goldberg sold most of his stake in WebCT to Boston-Based Universal Learning Technology. The combined company took on the WebCT name. [8] [11] Goldberg remained as president of the Canadian division of WebCT until 2002 when he left to co-found Silicon Chalk.
In 2002 Goldberg co-founded Silicon Chalk and served as the president and CEO. [12] Silicon Chalk created software for use in laptop or computer enabled higher education classrooms. The software facilitated the recording of classroom presentations, student note taking, polling, file sharing, and other features. [13] The company never achieved widespread success, though did have users in 70 universities and colleges when it was sold to Horizon Wimba [14]
In 2007 Goldberg began work on Brainify (website), an academic social bookmarking and networking site for university and college students and professors. [15] Brainify was launched in January 2009 and Goldberg acts as the President and CEO. Members from 250 institutions had joined within the first 20 days of its launch. [16]
In June, 2010, Goldberg launched AssociCom (website), a professional networking and discovery platform with an emphasis on enabling member discovery, learning and connection within professional associations and societies. [17]
Also in 2010, Murray founded the company Marine Learning Systems (website). Their product, MarineLMS, is a learning management system for training in the maritime industry, with BC Ferries as their first customer. [18]
In 2023, Murray founded the company SkillGrader (website) as a spin-out of Marine Learning Systems. SkillGrader is an application for objective observational assessment of individuals or teams while performing skills. Early users include the Canadian Navy [19] , large cruise lines, ferry operators and first responders.
The School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US is a school for computer science established in 1988. It has been consistently ranked among the best computer science programs over the decades. As of 2024 U.S. News & World Report ranks the graduate program as tied for No. 1 with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley.
Harold Abelson is an American mathematician and computer scientist. He is a professor of computer science and engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a founding director of both Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation, creator of the MIT App Inventor platform, and co-author of the widely-used textbook Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, sometimes also referred to as "the wizard book."
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In the history of virtual learning environments, the 1990s was a time of growth, primarily due to the advent of the affordable computer and of the Internet.
Mark Joseph Guzdial is a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He was formerly a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the College of Computing and the GVU Center. He has conducted research in the fields of computer science education and the learning sciences and internationally in the field of Information Technology. From 2001–2003, he was selected to be an ACM Distinguished Lecturer, and in 2007 he was appointed Vice-Chair of the ACM Education Board Council. He was the original developer of the CoWeb, one of the earliest wiki engines, which was implemented in Squeak and has been in use at institutions of higher education since 1998. He is the inventor of the Media Computation approach to learning introductory computing, which uses contextualized computing education to attract and retain students.
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Said Hadjerrouit is a professor of informatics and computer science at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway. He got a doctoral degree (Dr.Ing) in 1992 in the field of medical expert systems and artificial intelligence, and a master's degree (1985) in software engineering from the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany. His teaching in Berlin focused mostly on informatics and society, philosophical and ethical issues of computing, and computers in developing countries. In 1991, he moved from Berlin to Kristiansand, Norway, and worked at the Institute of Electronic Data processing at the University of Agder. In 1994, he moved to the Institute of Mathematical Sciences at the same university, where he was appointed as an associate professor for teaching object-oriented programming, Web engineering, software development, and databases. From 2004, his work shifted to didactics of informatics and computer science education, ICT in mathematics education, ICT-enhanced learning, Web-based learning resources, social software, and Web 2.0 technology. In 2008, Hadjerrouit made a major shift in his research focus from didactics of informatics and Computer Science to mathematics education and use of digital tools in teaching and learning mathematics. He has been teaching the doctoral course “Theories in the Learning and Teaching of Mathematics” since 2014. He is also supervising two PhD students in the field of Flipped Classroom and documentational approach to mathematics education. Hadjerrouit has more than 140 publications in international journals and conference proceedings. He was awarded for Best Paper at Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference in San Diego, California, United States, and IADIS e-Society conference 2012 in Berlin, Germany.
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Stephen P. Boyd is an American professor and control theorist. He is the Samsung Professor of Engineering, Professor in Electrical Engineering, and professor by courtesy in Computer Science and Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. He is also affiliated with Stanford's Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME).
Maja Krzic is a soil scientist and an associate professor in the Department of Forest & Conservation Sciences in the Faculty of Forestry with a joint appointment in the Applied Biology and Soil Sciences programs in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. She is a founder of the Virtual Soil Science Learning Resources Group, a collaborative teaching effort among scientists, students, and multimedia experts from seven universities and three research institutions in Canada that create open access soil science educational resources. She is also the president of the Canadian Society of Soil Science and was named a 3M National Teaching Fellow in 2016.
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