Caroline Haythornthwaite is Professor, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, The iSchool at The University of British Columbia where she served as Director from 2010 to 2015. She joined UBC in 2010 after 14 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and 10 years in the computing industry. She has an international reputation in research on e-learning, virtual community, and distributed knowledge from a social network analysis perspective, and the impact of computer media and the Internet on work, learning and social interaction.
Current initiatives includes her role as a founding member with the Society for Learning Analytics Research (http://solaresearch.org/) an organization focused on exploring the role and impact of analytics in support of teaching, learning and academic achievement; research on social media and learning supported by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada; and continued examination of motivations to contribute to open, online initiatives.
Major publications include of E-learning Theory and Practice (2011, with Richard Andrews), The SAGE Handbook of E-learning Research (2007, with Richard Andrews; 2nd edition in progress), The Internet in Everyday Life (2002, with Barry Wellman), and recent journal special issues on New Media, New Literacies, and New Forms of Learning, International Journal of Learning and Media (2014) and Learning Analytics, American Behavioral Scientist (2013). Further information can be found on her website http://haythorn.wordpress.com/.