by Annette Sherry
February 2004
Insook Lee wins the 2003 deKeiffer
International Fellowship Award
The International Division of AECT
was pleased to identify Dr. Insook Lee as the recipient of the
Robert de Kieffer International Fellowship for 2003. Dr.
Lee was recognized as a leader who makes professional ties in
educational communications and technology across continents. Dr.
Lee had the following comments during an interview with Dr. Annette
Sherry, who coordinated the selection process.
Q. How did you become involved in
the field of educational communications and technology?
I chose to major in Educational Technology
for my undergraduate program since I was very interested in media
and communication during my high school years. At that time,
especially movie was capturing my curiosity.
Q. How long have you been working
in this field?
Well, I can say that I have been in
the educational technology field for 28 years now because I entered
the Educational Technology undergraduate program at Ewha Womans
University in 1976.
Q. Would you identify what positions
have you held in the past and briefly describe your current position?
Here is an overview of my work.
| 2003- Date |
Associate Professor, Dept. of Education, Sejong University,
Seoul |
| 1998- Date |
Director, Multimedia Center for Excellence in Education,
Sejong University |
| 1998-2002 |
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Education, Sejong University,
Seoul |
| 2001 |
Director, Planning Affairs/e-Learning Research Center,
Sejong Cyber University, Seoul |
| 1997-1998 |
Director, Dept. of Educational Research, HRD Div., Dongbu
Insurance Co., Seoul |
| 1995-1997 |
Researcher, Div. of Educational Tech, Korean Educational
Development Institute, Seoul |
|
|
| Professional Services: associations |
| 2003-2004 |
Program Committee member, 2003-2004 ED-MEDIA Conference,
AACE |
| 2004 |
Program Committee member, The 4th IEEE International Conference
on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT 2004) |
| 1998-current |
Korean Society for Educational Technology: Board Member
(1998-current), Editor (1998, 2000) of Journal of Educational
Technology |
| 1997-current |
Korean Society for Corporate Education: Board Member (1997-current),
Vice-president (2001-2002, 2003-2004), Editorial Board (1997-2000) |
| 1999-current |
Korean Association of Educational Information & Broadcasting:
Board Member (1999-current), Editor of Membership Newsletter
(2000-current), Editorial Board (2000-2001, 2002-2003) of
the Journal |
|
|
| Professional Services: Others |
| 2003. 7 - 12 |
2003 Internet-based Training Organization Evaluation Committee,
Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training
(KRIVET) & Ministry of Labor |
| 2003. 3 - 05. 5 |
Educational Software Qualities Accreditation Committee.
Korea Education & Research Information Service (KERIS) |
| 2003. 4 - 04. 3 |
Approval Board Member, Distance University Approval Review
Committee, Ministry of Education and Human Resources |
| 2002. 4 - 03. 3 |
Approval Board Member, Distance University Approval Review
Committee, Ministry of Education and Human Resources |
| 2001-current |
Policy Advisory Board Member, Reunification Education
Committee, Ministry of Reunification |
| 2000-current |
Advisory Committee Member, ISO/JTC1/SC36, Agency for Technology
Standards, Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, Korea |
Q. How did you come to join and
be active in AECT?
It seems natural for me to join AECT.
The 1991 convention in Orlando was my first experience with AECT.
That year, I was a second year graduate student in the US and
all the professional presentations and exhibitions amazed me.
Since then, AECT has meant a special to me. Foremost, I’ve
been growing up by the special encouragement and cares of AECT:
AECT selected me as an Annual Conference Intern in 1993 and a
recipient for Dean and Sybil McClusky in 1995. I have much
gratefulness to return to AECT! AECT is an academic motherland
to me.
Q. Your study about gender differences
in online learning in the Korean university context is intriguing.
Could you please describe how you became interested in this aspect
of online learning?
I was not interested in gender issues
in my early years at all. Interestingly, as approaching
to age 40, I became to wonder if there are any gender differences
in performance in learning environment. Then, the critical
incident occurred to me in 1998, when I extensively reviewed research
in the areas of sociology and linguistics that seriously dealt
with gender related power dynamics, discrimination, and harassment
issues in the CMC environment. I, intrigued by those works,
conducted my first study on gender differences in online ‘learning’
environment, which was published in ETR&D later in 2002.
Q. What subsequent or related studies
are you conducting?
After my first study on gender differences
1999, I continued another research funded by KRF(Korean Research
Foundation) in 2000-2001, with the title of “gender differences
in learning strategies in cyberspace: In search of strategies
for gender-free cyber education”. As a related study, “self-regulation,
self-efficacy and e-learning strategies during e-learning and
academic achievement” funded by KRF in 2001-2002 has been
just published in a Korean journal. Currently, I’m
finishing my first year of two years research funded by KRF, ‘introducing
e-learning strategies with the best instructional model’.
In addition, I have an English paper just published in ‘Korea
Journal’ by UNESCO Korea, ‘e-learning in Korea: its
present and future prospects’, which comprehensively reviews
the trend of e-learning in South Korea.
Q. What challenges have you faced
in disseminating your work in both Korean and English?
First and the biggest challenge might
be ‘time’: It is always extra pressure for me to find
out time to produce an English paper with a good quality. Second
one is to keep paying attention to the mainstream research trend
in English based countries.
Q. What advice could you offer international
researchers in our field?
I’d like to say, ‘Don’t
try to simply follow the mainstream researchers’ research
topics but try to go beyond it and follow your intuition based
on your academic and cultural reflections.
Q. What advice could you provide
for continuing collaborative efforts between international and
U.S.-based leaders who are members of AECT?
It might be a good idea for both leaders
to find their common research interests and conduct collaborative
research on those, ideally seeking for matching funds. And if
we can use visiting programs or lecture invitation programs between
international and U.S. universities and organizations in mutual
ways, it might be wonderful.
Q. Do you have any suggestions for
future endeavors within AECT?
AECT must have a vision of extending
its membership and leadership into the international community.
To pursue that, there might be some specific strategies as follows:
- AECT might need to invite more leaders from non-U.S. based
countries, including Asia and Europe, into the board members
and program committee members.
- AECT might need to invite guest or keynote speakers from
non-U.S. countries during the annual convention.
- And, AECT leaders need to put harder efforts to ensure that
the members believe AECT is ‘growing’. There
are some worries among the members, I feel.
- AECT’s annual conference seems loosing academic features:
I believe we need to keep some degree of ‘academic entity’,
at least.
- AECT should put more efforts to attract more professionals
in the annual conference. Recently I find that there are too
many graduate students’ presentations, professionals not
coming back.
Q. Do you have any other comments
you would like to make?
I’d like to donate the money
paid for the registration to the International Division. I’d
like to say ‘thank you so much’ to you and all the
other board members in the International Division, especially
Jenny Johnson and Nick Eastmond (I was surprised!).
