Web Learning Expert Will Join Stanford

Candace Thille, who has been director of the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University since it began in 2002, is moving to Stanford University in September. There, as an assistant professor of education in the Graduate School of Education, she will continue her work applying results from cognitive science to the design, use, and evaluation of open Web-based learning environments. Her program’s grants and researchers will be divided between the two institutions.

Ms. Thille said in an e-mail that the move will enable her to include researchers who study other aspects of teaching and learning in the project. She expects to work, for example, with Claude Steele, the school’s dean, and other colleagues to devise ways to reduce the negative effects of “stereotype threat"—the anxiety that members of certain groups may feel about confirming negative stereotypes about their groups—in the design of online-learning systems. She will also be involved in helping faculty members at Stanford and elsewhere develop online material that improves teaching and learning.