Ali Jafari

Ali Jafari, Ph.D.

Ali Jafari in 2014
Born Isfahan, Iran
Occupation Professor of Computer and Information Technology, Director of CyberLab, Founder and CEO of Course Networking (theCN.com)
Website thecn.com/aj10

Ali Jafari Persian: علی جعفری)‎‎,) is currently working as a Professor of Computer and Information Technology at the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology and as the Director of the CyberLab at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Ali Jafari earned his BS in Business Administration from the University of Isfahan, Iran, before he moved to the United States to pursue a MS in Media Technology at the University of Wisconsin. He completed his doctorate studies in Telecommunications and Mass Communication from Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He is also a serial entrepreneur well known for his research and entrepreneurship in the area of Information Technology (IT) and Learning management systems.

Background

Dr. Jafari has contributed his entrepreneurial savvy to three books, co-editing and authoring Handbook of Research on ePortfolios, Designing Portals and Course Management Systems for Learning: Beyond Accidental Pedagogy. He has presented papers and delivered keynote addresses in over a hundred national and international conferences.His research has been published in professional and scholarly journals on a variety of subjects in information technology. His research interests include user interface design, smart learning environments, distance learning, and intelligent agents both from conceptual and architectural perspectives, which guide the Professor’s passion for improving the integration of technology into teaching and learning.

Dr. Jafari wants to see the milestones of research go further than the acquisition of knowledge. In order to tackle real life problems, he feels, "It would be progress if higher education were to put a greater emphasis on commercialization of discoveries—perhaps even assigning commercialization the same level of importance as getting published and attracting grants”. In the future, he hopes to further develop products for commercialization to effectively exploit the uses and opportunities of modern technology in education.

LMS Project Background

Based on industry observations in 1997 (the WebLab group began trials with off-the-shelf software) including pre-existing commercially viable systems, WebCt '95, Courseinfo/Blackboard '96-'97, VCU's Web Course in a Box, D2L '99, and Real Education/eCollege '96, now Pearson Learning Studio, Jafari developed three of his own LMS university projects. These included 1) Indiana University's (1999) Oncourse project, 2) the ANGEL Learning Management System (2000) and 3) the Epsilen Environment 2004.

The state of the LMS marketplace, commercially viable and open source projects, and the history can be seen here in a LMS Spring 2016 Report From the Industry. and a full listing can be found on Wikipedia at History of virtual learning environments .

Indiana University's WebLab 1996

The CyberLab, previously called WebLab, opened at IUPUI in 1996 and serves as a research and development laboratory for the IUPUI campus, employing personnel directed by Computer Information Technology professor, Ali Jafari. Although other commercial LMS systems existed, an idea to develop a computer program to create a Web environment for every course at IUPUI began in the fall of 1997 at the WebLab (now called CyberLab)(1) Laboratory on the IUPUI campus. The initial research system became Indiana University's OnCourse R&D project founded by Chris Clapp and Tony Leonard and the system was widely deployed at IUPUI campus-wide in January 1999. Dr. Ali Jafari served as the project director and system architect for the design and development of the Oncourse R&D Project and David Mills served as the lead system engineer.

In 2004, four leading U.S. universities, together with Jasig, the parent organization of the uPortal framework, began a collaboration to combine and synchronize their assorted learning software into a collection of integrated, open source tools. Their primary goal was to improve teaching, learning and research by providing a compelling alternative to proprietary enterprise learning systems; an innovative platform for learning and collaboration that is produced by and for the higher education community. In order to meet the enterprise systems, support and scalability required by more than one institution, parts of the OnCourse "homegrown" project were folded into Sakai.

The development of Sakai (software) was originally funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation as the Sakai Project. The early versions of the software were based on existing tools created by the founding institutions, with the largest piece coming from the University of Michigan's "CHEF" course management system. "Sakai" is a play on the word “chef,” and refers to Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai.

Oncourse then simply became the name of IU's implementation of the Sakai project. Since many institutions have recently shifted out of the Sakai project due to Blackboard's hiring of Chuck Severance many institutions are now moving towards other commercially viable LMS systems. In 2005 IU retired the Sakai platform and moved to a commercially viable alternative. https://oncourse.iu.edu/portal

Angel Learning (2000)

In spring of 1999, the WebLab group, under their new Laboratory organization named CyberLab, continued their Oncourse R&D project in the direction of the development of "A New Global Environment for Learning or ANGEL. ANGEL—the next generation of Oncourse.

In 2000, with seed funding from Indiana University, Jafari founded Angel Learning Inc. with David Mills, a 1999 graduate of the School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI. By bringing in previous leaders of the eCollege team, doing exploration and additive research on Blackboard's commercially viable product (David Mills visited Blackboard's offices in late 1999), and providing a lower cost solution than its competitors' ANGEL Learning became commercially viable, and an industry competitor.Under Christopher Clapp, and Ray Henderson's leadership (a former eCollege employee), ANGEL Learning was acquired (May 2009) by Blackboard.

Epsilen Learning (2008)

By forming a partnership and securing venture capital from The New York Times Company, a new LMS was deployed, called Epsilen. Epsilen was built by an Indian outsourcing company DiaSpark, and led by former Blackboard/WebCT employee (Evan Nisonson August 2010 – October 2012). Headquartered in Indianapolis Epsilen then merged into the New York times as a content management system. Epsilen no longer competes in the LMS market space and has subsequently gone bankrupt as a depressed asset within ConnectEDU, the platform is no longer in commercial use.

Current Project: CourseNetworking

Jafari's most recent LMS technology based company, CourseNetworking LLC (The CN) began in 2011 with seed funding from Indiana University and Dr. Jafari. The CN combines learning management and social networking, like EdCast and several others.

Recent Keynote and Invited Speaker Presentations

2016

2015

2014

Awards

2016 Named as an Indiana University Innovator of the Year among 12 other colleagues for "Spurring Innovation through Advances in Educational Technology"

2015 IUPUI Spirit of Philanthropy Award

2012 TechPoint Mira Award in the category of Technology in Education Excellence & Innovation - Individual for his contributions to revolutionizing education through technology.

2012 IUPUI Spirit of Philanthropy Award - for launching the Jafari Graduate Fellows program

2003 Educause Quarterly Contribution of the Year recipient for "Conceptualizing Intelligent Agents for Teaching and Learning", an article which appeared in EQ Volume 25, Number 3

Media and Publications

References

See also

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