Biography

Kannan AMR, is currently working as the Director of Distance Learning at California State University, Northridge, where he takes care of planning and execution of twelve degree seeking bachelors and graduate programs and five non-degree seeking certificate programs. He works closely with the department chairs and academic leads across the campus to create new self-supported distance learning programs. Previously Kannan was the Director of Digital Design and Learning at Cyona Solutions in New York and before that he worked as the Digital Learning Manager at KPMG.

Earlier he worked at the College of Westchester in White Plains, NY from 2014 to 2016. As the Director of Instructional Design, he led the redesigning of online courses and in 2015 the College of Westchester won the prestigious Quality Matters (QM) online course redesign award  under the “Outstanding Impact by a Higher Education Organization” category.

From 2006 to 2014, Kannan has worked as a full-time faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI and Stevenson University, MD. While at Stevenson University he led new program development and participated in a University wide reaccreditation process. Before started teaching in 2006, Kannan was working as an instructional technology consultant at Syracuse University, helping faculty incorporate technology in their teaching for nearly three years. From the year 2000 to 2006 he also worked as an adjunct faculty at Syracuse University teaching various graduate level courses. He also worked as a multimedia specialist at Syracuse University from 1999 to 2002. Before coming to USA in 1997 to join the graduate degree at Syracuse University, Kannan was working as a photojournalist in the Middle-East and in India.

Kannan has received his Ph.D., and MS from Syracuse University in Instructional Design, Development and Evaluation. He also has another MS in Visual and Interactive Communication from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Kannan’s current research interests are video games to improve math and science education, gamification of learning and pedagogical practices to augment online courses and improving accessibility through immersive experience technologies.