Charlotte Nirmalani GunawardenaCharlotte Nirmalani Gunawardena is Regents' Professor of Distance Education and Instructional Technology in the Organizational Learning and Instructional Technology Program at the University of New Mexico. For over twenty years she has published widey and presented on distance education, eLearning, and Instructional Technology. She currently researches the social construction of knowledge in online learning communities, the socio-cultural context of online learning, social presence theory, and cross-cultural e-mentoring. She has served as Principal Investigator and Project Director for U.S. federal research and evaluation grants, and was a Fulbright senior researcher in Morocco and Sri Lanka. She has consulted for World Bank and Asian Development Bank distance education projects, and the Ministry of Education in Sri Lanka to train online teachers and instructional designers for its National Online Distance Education Service. Read More Read Less