Chris Fowler

Chris Fowler has a degree in Psychology and Sociology, and a Ph.D in Cognitive Psychology. He is currently Co-ordinator and Professor of Evaluation and Research at the Institute of Distance Education, the University of Swaziland. His main responsibilities are to create and implement a Quality Enhancement process and to encourage and grow a research culture within the Institution.

From 2002 to 2009 he was Director of Chimera, the Institute Social and Technical Research at the University of Essex. With respect to e-Learning, the Institute has received funding from the UK JISC for a desk study on e-learning models; to develop and pilot DELTA, a distributed learning resource browser based on a semantic web approach; to develop a tool for browsing social networks; to combine social networks with the learning resource browser tools; and to develop and enhance a user-centred method (UIDM) to support practitioners designing and evaluating their own elearning software.

Prior to joining the University of Essex, he was head the British Telecom’s (BT) Asian Research Centre in Malaysia, and the Customer Behaviour Lab at Adastral Park, Martlesham Heath, Suffolk, UK. The Customer Behaviour Laboratory was responsible for BT’s Education and Training research programme. From 1998-2000 he was also the part-time Director of the Institute of Education’s (London) Future Learning Centre.