Educational Technology
Ernie Perez: Director of Educational Technology
Ernie Perez serves as the Director of Educational Technology for Digital Learning & Innovation for Boston University, where he plays a leading role in the visioning, management, selection, and deployment of enterprise-level educational technology services. He leads and oversees several teams including educational technologists, platform administrators, and instructional designers in the educational technology organization.
Ernie holds a M.S. in Adult, Occupational and Continuing Education and a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from Kansas State University.
Kristen McCarthy, Administrative Coordinator
Kristen started with Digital Learning and Innovations in February 2020 and supports DL&I’s Educational Technology and Digital Initiatives’ teams. In this role, Kristen coordinates administrative tasking—helping to ensure these teams have necessary support and resources. Kristen received a Master of Learning Sciences degree at Northwestern, focusing her research on the way that portable internet technology affected a learner’s sense of knowledge ownership. Her dedication to higher education advancement brought her to Michigan to work in Academic Affairs for the University of Michigan. She supported digital learning in the Dental School and worked on admissions and recruiting for the School of Public Health before relocating to the east coast. Kristen loves reading, hiking with her dogs, and visiting the New England Aquarium.
Amod Lele: Lead Educational Technologist
Amod Lele helps faculty navigate a wide array of technologies for use in their classes and professional life. He leads and manages a team of educational technologists and has been a part of BU’s Educational Technology team for more than eight years. Amod is interested in the use and promotion of open educational resources (OER) in higher education. He holds a PhD from Harvard University in religious studies and has almost ten years of college and university teaching experience. He regularly teaches a course on Indian philosophy in the CAS philosophy department. As a lifelong learner, Amod also earned an M.S. degree in Computer Science from Metropolitan College in 2016. In his spare time, he publishes scholarly articles on Buddhist ethics and writes a biweekly updated blog on cross-cultural philosophy.
Chihsun Chiu: Educational Technologist
Chihsun Chiu (錡熏邱 Pinyin: qí xūn qiū), helps faculty get the best results out of the Learning Management System, Blackboard Learn. Her specialization includes the LMS, but also instructional design, and all other technologies that touch the LMS. She holds a Ph.D. in Educational Technology with a Minor in Instructional Design from the University of Kansas, a Master of Arts degree in Digital Storytelling Media from Ball State University, and a B.A. in Radio, Television and Film from Shih Hsin University in Taipei, Taiwan. Chihsun’s doctoral dissertation elaborated on designing online instruction for students with learning disabilities and other struggling learners.
Damon Carlson: Educational Technologist
Damon Carlson has deep experience with classroom technologies, lecture capture, and the daily use of these technologies at Boston University. He is an infoComm Certified Technology Specialist and supports faculty with his expertise. Damon’s responsibilities include Audience Response Systems (clickers like TurningPoint, Tophat etc.), Echo360 Lecture Capture, and many other technologies. Damon earned a B.S. in Business Administration degree with a concentration in information systems from Salem State University (Salem, MA) and an M.Ed. degree from Boston University. He currently is actively pursuing another graduate degree in information technology/computer science at Metropolitan College.
Maria Afzal: Educational Technologist
Maria advises and assists faculty on pedagogic and technical issues. She offers training and support on a variety of platforms such as Digication, Turnitin Feedback Studio, Adobe’s Creative Cloud and others. She is also an experienced Visual Designer who teaches advanced design strategies and software courses in the College of Communication at BU.
Prior to coming to Boston University, Maria worked as an Educational Technologist and online Course Designer at UMass Amherst. Maria holds a B.S (Hons) in Computer Science, MFA in Multimedia Arts and a M.Ed in Learning Technologies from University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
David DeCamp: Educational Technologist
Dave advises and assists faculty on a variety of platforms for classroom use, with a focus on NVivo, BU Learning Blocks (BULB), Open Educational Resources, Google Suite for Education, MediaKron, and other public-facing platforms for creating and displaying educational content online. Dave also has experience in digital exhibit building, text encoding, and pedagogical applications of open-source mapping technologies. Dave earned his MA and PhD in World History from Northeastern University. While at Northeastern he worked with the library’s Digital Scholarship Group to support using digital platforms for teaching and research. He received his BA in History from Davidson College and taught World History at Northeastern University and Emmanuel College.
Qiyuan Li: Data Modeler and Developer
Qiyuan is an Educational Technology data modeler and developer with Boston University’s Office of Digital Learning & Innovation. She serves as a data architect responsible for the integration of data from varied data sources, including learning management systems (Blackboard and edX), student information system, and other institutional applications to produce reports and dashboards in support of the data-informed decision making process. Qiyuan received her Ph.D. degree in Learning, Design and Technology with a minor in Statistics at the Pennsylvania State University. She focused on the application of machine learning methods to evaluate the interaction of MOOC learners in her dissertation, then developed it into a learning analytics dashboard that supports online teaching and learning activities. Qiyuan also has a master degree in Psychology and a bachelor in Engineering, so she is also interested in teaching and learning in mental health and S.T.E.M. domains.
Educational Platform Administration
Harry Lawrence: Manger, Educational Platform Administration
Harry is the Manager of the Educational Platform Administration group for Educational Technology. His background working with the LMS and lecture capture spans many years, having previously served as Senior Platform Administrator within Educational Technology, as a Client Support Specialist in the IT Help Center and also in Information Technology and Academic Technology at Simmons College. Harry is knowledgeable in many other educational technologies and supports faculty and the front-line Client Support Specialists in the IT Help Center when deep expertise is required. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Siena College and a Master of Science degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons College.
Wendell Seale: Senior Platform Administrator, Video Streaming
Wendell Seale serves in the role of Platform Administrator for the streaming video platform for instructional video. Wendell has more than a decade of a track record of proven leadership in Video and Audio Production in higher education. Besides his expertise in the AV area Wendell has many years of experience with a plethora of instructional technologies, which he gained during his career at Cambridge College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While his primary job designation is on the technical side Wendell is also an experienced and well-rounded educational technologist. Wendell’s academic credentials include a Bachelor of Science in New Media from Emerson College and a Master of Education in Instructional Technology from Cambridge College.
Monty Kaplan: Platform Administrator
Monty’s focus is platform administration for the Questrom online MBA and the efficient delivery of our MicroMasters and other courses offered on edX.
Prior to coming to Boston University, Monty worked as an Instructional Technologist at Emerson College. During his time in Higher Education he has supported technologies such as Blackboard, ePortfolio, and WordPress.
Jennifer MacLeod: Educational Platform Administrator
Jennifer joined the Educational Technology team in June 2018, after the merger of Boston University and Wheelock College. She brings 20 years of experience with a broad spectrum of learning technologies and distance education to her position. Jennifer is the Platform Administrator for BU’s Blackboard and Echo360. Prior to serving at Wheelock College, Jennifer worked for the Colleges of the Fenway, Texas A&M University at Galveston (where she earned the Vice President Meritorious Service Distinguished Staff Award), and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.
Kevin Wiles: Platform Administrator
Kevin is a Platform Administrator for the educational assessment and evaluation platforms. Before joining DL&I, he was the administrator for Summer Term responsible for managing their website and multiple databases for faculty, student, and course information, as well as course assessments. Kevin’s background with Boston University originates as an undergraduate student earning a degree in French. Later returning to BU as an employee, he earned a certificate in Computer Science from Metropolitan College and gained nearly a decade of combined work experience at BU. Kevin is currently enrolled in the Ed.M. program at Boston University Wheelock College of Education & Human Development.
Joanna Chang: Platform Administrator
Joanna joins DL&I as a Platform Administrator for the Questrom online MBA (OMBA) program, with a background in eLearning curriculum design, program development, and faculty management, mainly focused in medical research and health professions in academia. Prior to Boston University, Joanna worked as Assistant Director of Academic Operations in the Business Analytics Program (HBAP) at Harvard Business School Online. Joanna holds a MA in Higher Education Administration from Boston College and a BA in Psychology and Social Behavior from the University of California, Irvine.