Kevin Oliver

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Bio

Dr. Oliver has served on the faculty in NC State’s College of Education since 2005, and was promoted to full Professor in 2017. He assumed the role of Department Head of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences (TELS) in the fall of 2022. He previously provided program-area leadership as Coordinator for Learning, Design, and Technology (LDT) degree programs (undergraduate, master’s, doctoral) and certificates (learning analytics certificate, e-learning certificate). He has been an active mentor to LDT doctoral students, graduating thirteen doctoral students as chair, three as co-chair, and presently chairing six doctoral committees. He previously served as Coordinator for a College of Education Distance and Remote Learning Task Force during the pandemic. Prior to arriving at NC State, Dr. Oliver served as Co-Director of the Southeast Regional Technology in Education Consortium affiliated with the SERVE Regional Education Lab (REL) at UNC-G, providing technical assistance to technology divisions within six southeastern state departments of education (2002-2004). He also served as an Instructional Design and Evaluation Specialist with the Educational Technologies faculty development group at Virginia Tech (1999-2002).

Research Description

In 18 years at NC State, Dr. Oliver’s research has focused on three areas: 1) technical-analytical approaches to represent cultural-historical information and disinformation toward enhanced understanding and empowerment; 2) quality distance learning and virtual schooling; and 3) STEM learning in informal after-school settings. He has received more than $3 million in externally funded grants and contracts as PI or Co-PI (e.g., NSF, Gates Foundation, Burroughs-Wellcome Fund), and leveraged additional internal funding from DELTA, FRPD, and other sources. He has co-led since 2011 a study abroad program for in-service teachers in Raleigh-Durham funded by the Triangle Community Foundation’s Borchardt Fund. The program has trained 170 teachers to create technical cultural representations using varied tools and approaches in an international context; preparation that helps teachers practice more culturally-responsive teaching back in their own classrooms with an increasingly diverse student population (see, Oliver, Wiseman, and Greer-Banks, 2021). Drawing on a particular mode of cultural representation from this study abroad program (locative media), Dr. Oliver co-leads the Locative Press Lab in the college, working with teachers and community partners on locative media projects such as locative and virtual tours (see Russell School Tour).

Dr. Oliver was named a UNC System Faculty Fellow for the calendar year 2022, and studied technology-intensive spaces across the 16-university system and how they supported innovation. He is currently listed on the Fulbright Specialist Roster with a four-year tenure (October 2021 through October 2025) and is eligible to be matched with short-term projects designed by host institutions globally through the Fulbright Specialist program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA). He also serves as an officer (Treasurer) with the North Carolina chapter of the Fulbright Association.

Editorial Boards

• Educational Technology Research & Development (ETR&D)
• Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education (JDLTE)
• Journal of Online Learning Research (JOLR)

Publications

• Fostering Interdisciplinary Learning for Elementary Students Through Developing Interactive Digital Stories , (2023)
• Multimodal CS Education Using a Scaffolded CSCL Environment , PROCEEDINGS OF THE 2023 CONFERENCE ON INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION, ITICSE 2023, VOL. 2 (2023)
• Supporting Upper Elementary Students in Multidisciplinary Block-Based Narrative Programming , (2022)
• Informing Makerspace Outcomes Through a Linguistic Analysis of Written and Video-Recorded Project Assessments , International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education (2021)
• Measuring in-service teacher self-efficacy for teaching computational thinking: development and validation of the T-STEM CT , EDUCATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES (2021)
• Online Learning in Mathematics Education , (2021)
• Supporting Interactive Storytelling with Block-Based Narrative Programming , Interactive Storytelling (2021)
• Toward a Block-Based Programming Approach to Interactive Storytelling for Upper Elementary Students , Interactive Storytelling (2020)
• Computational thinking in student reflections: A thematic analysis of video project documentation in the afterschool makerspace , Proceedings of Ed Media + Innovate Learning (2019)
• Design and development of a new course on culture, media, and technology , Proceedings of E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education (2019)

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