Dr. Charlotte Nirmalani (Lani)
Gunawardena
Regents' Professor
Charlotte (Lani) Gunawardena is Regents' Professor of Distance Education and Instructional Technology in the Organizational Learning and Instructional Technology (OLIT) Program in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Gunawardena received her Ph.D. and master's degrees from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, and her bachelor's degree from the University of Sri Lanka, Kelaniya. Her focus areas are distance education, e-Learning, and cross-cultural communication. She has published numerous articles and book chapters in these fields and given over 100 national and international professional presentations. She has been Principal Investigator and Project Director for national research and evaluation grants, and evaluated Intel Corporations' FSM College of Engineering's distance education program.
Dr. Gunawardena worked as an Asian Development Bank consultant for the Ministry of Higher Education in Sri Lanka and trained online course designers, tutors, and mentors for the National Online Distance Education System (NODES). She was also a World Bank consultant in Sri Lanka, and has also consulted in Brazil, Mexico, Norway, Turkey, and China.
She has won several awards, including the University of New Mexico's General Library Faculty Recognition Award for outstanding work as a College of Education faculty member, the University of New Mexico Regents' Lecturership, the Charles A. Wedemyer Award for Excellence in Book-length Manuscripts in the Field of Distance Education, and a Fulbright scholar regional research award to research sociocultural factors influencing the building of online communities in Morocco and Sri Lanka. She was awarded a Regents' Professorship by the University of New Mexico in 2008.
Research Interests
- Social construction of knowledge in online thought communities
- Sociocultural context of online learning and social presence theory
- Design, implementation, and evaluation of distance education and e-learning
- Adult learning
- Cross-cultural communication and e-mentoring
Classes Dr. Gunawardena Teaches
- OLIT 535. Theory and Practice of Distance Learning
- OLIT 536. Instructional Television: Principles and Applications
- OLIT 537. Culture and Global eLearning
- OLIT 538. eLearning Course Design
- OLIT 546. Cross-Cultural Issues in Adult Learning
- OLIT 561. The Adult Learner
- OLIT 601. Advanced Instructional Design (doctoral level seminar)
- OLIT 635. Research in Distance Education (doctoral level seminar)
Selected Publications
- Gunawardena, C. N., Idrissi Alami, A., Jayatilleke, G., & Bouacharine, F. (2009). Identity, gender, and language in synchronous cybercultures: A cross-cultural study. In R. Goodfellow & M. N. Lamy (Eds.), Learning cultures in online education (pp.30 –51). London, UK: Continuum.
- Gunawardena, C. N., Hermans, M. B., Sanchez, D., Richmond, C., Bohley, M., & Tuttle, R. (2009). A theoretical framework for building online communities of practice with social networking tools. Educational Media International, 46(1), 3-16.
- Knight, E., Gunawardena, C. N., Aydin, C. H. (2009). Cultural interpretations of the visual meaning of icons and images used in North American web design. Educational Media International, 46 (1), 17-35.
- Gunawardena, C. N. (2009). A cross-cultural study of online social presence: Implications for designing virtual learning communities. Proceedings of the 23rd ICDE World Conference on Open Learning and Distance Education. Maastricht, The Netherlands.
- Gunawardena, C. N., & LaPointe, D. (2008). Social and cultural diversity in distance education. In T. Evans, M. Haughey, & D. Murphy (Eds.), International handbook of distance education (pp. 51-70). Bingley, UK: Emerald.
- Gunawardena, C. N., LaPointe, D., Linder-VanBerschot, J. A., Skinner, J. K., Richmond, C., Barrett, K., & Cardiff, M. S. (2008). E-mentoring to guide inquiry-based online learning across cultures. Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning (pp. 213-217). Madison, WI: The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
- Hollifield, M., Hewage, C., Gunawardena, C. N., Kodituwakku, P., Bopagoda, K., & Weerarathnege, K. (2008). Symptoms and coping in Sri-Lanka 20-21 months after the 2004 tsunami. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 192, 39-44.
- Gunawardena, C. N., & LaPointe, D. (2007). Cultural dynamics of online learning. In M. G. Moore (Ed.), Handbook of distance education (2nd ed., pp. 593-607). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Gunawardena, C. N., Ortegano-Layne, L., Carabajal, K., Frechette, C., Lindemann, K., Jennings, B. (2006). New model, new strategies: Instructional design for building online wisdom communities. Distance Education, 27(2), 217–232.
- Ortegano-Layne, L. & Gunawardena, C. N. (2004). Synthesizing social construction of knowledge in online conferences using concept maps. In A. J. Canas, J. D. Novak, & F. M. Gonzalez (Eds.). Concept maps: Theory, methodology, technology. Proceedings of the first international conference on concept mapping, (pp. 495-502). Pamplona, Spain 2004.
- Gunawardena, C. N., & McIsaac, M.S. (2004). Distance education. In D. Jonassen (Ed.), The handbook of research on education communications and technology, 2nd Ed. (pp. 355-395). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Gunawardena, C. N. (2004). The Challenge of Designing Inquiry-based Online Learning Environments: Theory into Practice. In T. Duffy and J. Kirkley (Eds.), Learner centered theory and practice in distance education: Cases from higher education ( pp. 143-158). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Gunawardena, C. N., & Zittle, F. (1997). Social presence as a predictor of satisfaction within a computer mediated conferencing environment. The American Journal of Distance Education, 11(3), 8-25.
- Gunawardena, C. N., Lowe, C. A., & Anderson, T. (1997). Analysis of a global online debate and the development of an interaction analysis model for examining social construction of knowledge in computer conferencing. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 17(4), 395-429.
Selected Invited International Keynote Presentations
- Cultural Aspects of Communication Processes Online: Identity, Gender, and Language in Synchronous Cybercultures. European Distance Education Network (EDEN) 2008 Annual Conference, 11-14 June, 2008, Lisbon, Portugal.
- Social Presence and Implications for Designing Online Learning Communities. Fourth International Conference on Educational Technology, July - August, 2005, Nanchang, China.
- Evaluating Knowledge Building in Online Learning Communities. XII International Conference on Distance Education, December 2-5, 2003, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.
- Researching Online Learning and Group Dynamics: Models and Methods. Didaktikk Og Teknologi Conference, February 13-14, 2003, Lillehammer, Norway.
- Social Presence and the Sociocultural Context of Online Education. Symposium on Open/Distance Education: New Horizons in Educational Communications and Technology, May 20-23, 2002, Eskisehir, Turkey.
- Designing and Evaluating Web-based Distance Education Courses. Eighth Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium (ISTEC) General Assembly, Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), November 16-21, 1998, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.
Selected Grants
- Principal Investigator for the evaluation and research subcontract (2000 - 2005, $1,048,855) of the Star Schools Program grant submitted by Oklahoma State University and funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education. This grant focuses on evaluating web-based online teacher professional development programs that use hypothesis-based learning and guided inquiry to teach science and math to middle school teachers.
- Principal Investigator for the research and evaluation subcontract of the Star Schools Program grant submitted by Oklahoma State University and Northern Arizona University and funded by the U.S. Dept. of Education for $468,589 from 1994-1997.
The "L" stands for "Learning"