Marilyn Lombardi

Biography

Marilyn M. Lombardi, PhD joined the faculty of the Duke University School of Nursing in May 2009 as Director of CONCEPT: The School's Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center (formerly known as the Academic Strategic Technology Initiative). As director, she develops interdisciplinary alliances with the Duke University Schools of Medicine, Engineering, Business and Law to foster innovation in healthcare education, and entrepreneurship in the translation of research into practice. The CONCEPT Center also sponsors a Catalyst Innovation Award program for fostering the creative application of technologies in support of transformational teaching and learning. Most recently, Marilyn's course on "Healthcare Innovation and Entrepreneurship," which she co-teaches with a member of the Duke Engineering faculty, was selected to be one of the first 11 massive open online courses that Duke University will be offering through its partnership with Coursera. She currently serves as a faculty adviser to the Provost on strategic decisions and assessment strategies related to online education. Prior to joining the faculty of the Duke University School of Nursing, Marilyn served as Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) Center at Duke University, an advanced computing organization that supports large-scale multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional research collaborations of benefit to the state of North Carolina and the nation. Marilyn has also held a leadership position in the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). As ELI Scholar-in-Residence, she was responsible for ELI's annual three-part white paper series, which offers an in-depth look at an emerging new trend in learning philosophy and technology-mediated practice, while helping to set the agenda for that year's ELI activities. A frequent invited speaker at events focusing on the future of higher education, she is a contributor to Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual (Springer-Verlag, 2009), and to the Carnegie Foundation book "Open Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge" (MIT Press, 2007). Recently, she has served on National Science Foundation review panels, and on advisory panels for the Council of Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and for the National Endowment for the Humanities grant program in Digital Humanities Scholarship. Marilyn has received support for her research in human-computer interaction and learning outcomes assessment in immersive education from the National Science Foundation and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Her essay for the March/April 2005 issue of EDUCAUSE Review, "Standing on the Plateau," reflects her special interest in emerging technology innovations that promise to extend the collaborative nature of campus life into the online realm. Her research and development activities in support of open-source immersive education platforms ("Open Cobalt") is a natural outgrowth of her earlier work in the private sector, where she co-founded a venture-financed software development company (ViOS, Inc.) and served as its chief strategist. ViOS, Inc. developed and launched a pioneering 3D online environment where large numbers of people were able to visualize, discover, and access web resources in the company of others. Marilyn first joined Duke University in 2005 as a senior strategist for the Office of Information Technology, where she oversaw creation of the strategic plan for technology at Duke through 2010. She also became a senior research scholar in the Information Science + Information Studies program, where she continues to analyze the impact of new information technologies on science, society, art, culture, commerce and the environment and to develop curriculum. Prior to her arrival at Duke, she served as Senior Strategist in the Division of Information Technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was responsible for providing perspective on national trends, building enterprise-wide and multi-institutional coalitions, and working with senior managers to develop and deploy new digital initiatives. Marilyn has received recognition for outstanding teaching and research, having spent more than 14 years as a tenured professor and federally funded researcher. She is the author of a book, The Body and the Song: Elizabeth Bishop's Poetics, and an edited volume, Elizabeth Bishop: The Geography of Gender.

EDUCAUSE Publications

  • Making the Grade: The Role of Assessment in Authentic Learning
    • Briefs, Case Studies, Papers, Reports
    • Author

    Assessment is an integral component of any successful teaching effort. Research has shown that students engage with subject matter based in part on their expectations about how their achievement will be evaluated.

  • ELI Discovery Tool: Guide to Blogging
    • Policies, Guidelines, Plans and Toolkits
    • Author

    The ELI Discovery Tool: Guide to Blogging offers practical information about how blogging can be used in teaching and learning and walks users through the important considerations for implementation.

  • Approaches That Work: How Authentic Learning Is Transforming Higher Education
    • Briefs, Case Studies, Papers, Reports
    • Author

    Authentic learning aligns well with the needs of today's participatory learners. The challenge is to channel their online and collaborative abilities and interests into academic pursuits, helping them develop the higher-order thinking skills they may not acquire on their own.

See All Publications by Marilyn Lombardi

EDUCAUSE Presentations

See All Presentations by Marilyn Lombardi

Memberships

EDUCAUSE Member

EDUCAUSE Involvement

  • EDUCAUSE Review Online Reviewers
    • Member: 2012 - 2013
  • ELI 2008 Spring Focus Session Program Committee
    • Member: 2007 - 2008