Latest update of this page: Septermber 27, 2004

Lya Visser

In this picture you see me do what I like best: communicating with people, keeping them motivated to learn and helping them to enjoy learning.

I also do research about what motivates people to learn and how they can maintain their motivation. I am particularly interested in the motivation of learners in a distance education context and try to get a better handle on how distance education institutions and their faculty should set themselves up to best serve the emotional and cognitive interests of their students. My research shows very clearly what many people already know intuitively, but what is often not adequately applied by many distance education institutions, namely that much of the success of students depends on the warmth of human relationships that surpass the physical distance between them, and between them and their faculty. My research has therefore important implications for the development of competencies of people who, like me, are involved in guiding other people's learning experiences, particularly if they do so in the rapidly developing context of online and other forms of learning at a distance.

I worked with the Learning Development Institute (LDI) as a training development and research associate to develop a series of workshops and alternative training events related to the above mentioned interest to create learning environments that care for people both emotionally and cognitively. In addition, and because of my interest in applying in a real life distance education environment what I learn, I served as a Program Professor of Applied Research at Nova Southeastern University, a major online teaching institution in South Florida, for almost three years from January 2000 to November 2002. However, I decided to leave that position and become full-time involved in LDI's work as a Director of Training so as to be more directly involved in creating the human capacity to care for learning around the world by working directly with those who teach.

More about me in my resume.