He has 40 years' experience designing and building educational technology, and has researched connections between technology, learning, and collaboration for 25 years. His research focuses on collaborative technologies, computer support for cooperative learning (CSCL), and design-based research methods, a term he coined in the late 1990s. He has recently completed a 3 years "on loan" position in the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a program officer in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings, and in the Directorate for Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering, Division of Information and Intelligent Systems.