Research & Theory
President Elect

Ginger Watson
Old Dominion University

Ginger Watson is an Associate Professor (tenured) in the Instructional Design and Technology Program in the Darden College of Education at Old Dominion University with a joint appointment at the Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center (VMASC). She has over 25 years of experience in research, development, and project management including the majority of years in senior, chief scientist, and administrative leadership positions. Her research interests include performance, cognition, and learning in authentic, simulation, gaming, and virtual environments. The backbone of this research is the use of strategies to promote learning and measures to assess attention, immersion, and cognitive processing.  She has over 50 peer-reviewed publications and is the author of numerous software products in use in professional settings, most of which were funded through external sources.  She has served as PI/Co-PI on 48 funded research projects with funding at over $20M.  She has extensive collaboration experience and in mentoring graduate students and junior faculty in the field.    
Ginger is a lifetime member of AECT and most recently served in a variety of positions, most recently as the Professional Development Coordinator for Research & Theory in 2015-2016, securing funding for and hosting the NSF-Sponsored Early Career Symposium.  She has also served as a board member for the D&D Division in 2010-2013, as a faculty mentor in the Early Career Symposium in 2013, and as a co-investigator on a needs assessment to assess volunteer opportunities within AECT which received a Presidential Award in 2014.  Her goals for the RTD are to: (1) continue to support division activities and events; (2) facilitate research and theory-related communication and collaboration within the RTD; (3) develop a research-related development and mentoring program within the division, in the areas such as competitive proposal writing and project administration; and (4) enhance RTD publication efforts, particularly in the area of conference-related publication outcomes from the division.

"AECT has been very valuable to me as a faculty member, researcher, and instructional designer. I appreciate this potential opportunity to give back to the organization while becoming more involved with the Research and Theory Division.  Thank you for your consideration."


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