Rising star in virtual schooling and educational video games is college's new UF Research Foundation Professor

Associate Professor Rick Ferdig, one of the leaders in virtual schooling as well as the new movement to harness the power of video games in the classroom, has been awarded a University of Florida Research Foundation Professorship.

Ferdig was one of fewer than three dozen recipients of the prestigious award, given annually to UF faculty who are selected through a competitive process. The three-year award, which comes with $5,000 salary supplement and $3,000 one-time grant, is intended to honor researchers who have shown a distinguished record of service over the previous five years.

A faculty member in the Educational Technology program in the School of Teaching and Learning since 2001, Ferdig is principal investigator on an AT&T Foundation-funded study in which he is assessing the outcomes of distance education programs in various K-12 systems in 22 states. The effort is one of the first comprehensive studies to determine which teaching techniques are most effective in online education.

He is also a prominent figure in the emerging field of educational video games and virtual environments. He recently accepted a position as editor of The International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, one of the few regularly-published, peer-reviewed journals in the field.

In summer 2007, Ferdig traveled to Rwanda , where education officials are looking to 21st century computing to provide possible solutions for problems in a chronically under-resourced school system. Ferdig assessed various schools and is studying ways to provide cost-effective and appropriate hardware and software for use in Rwandan schools. He will return to central Africa this summer to continue the project.

Ferdig earned his M.A. and Ph. D. in educational psychology from Michigan State University, and holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Calvin College.