LooneyWare currently serves as Michael Looney’s online portfolio and resume. Looney has over 20 years experience working in post–secondary education. He began his career as a Teaching Assistant at UBC in 1986 and in 1988 he was hired by Douglas College as a Biology Laboratory Instructor. It was at Douglas College that he developed his interest in the potential for instructional media to help overcome some of the conceptual bottlenecks introductory biology students faced in the laboratory. A number of small modules were developed for students and they were very well received by both students and participants at local conferences. Some of these modules are presented here.
Looney’s interest in multimedia eventually led to a Masters degree under the supervision of Dr. Brian Ellis at UBC. His thesis project (The Phytochemical World) attempted to determine if an interactive multimedia presentation could effectively spark any interest in the field of plant secondary metabolism from members of an undergraduate organic chemistry class; it did. The project has been used as a course resource at a number of universities worldwide and received a few meaningful accolades including New Scientist Site of the Day in 1999.
In 2003 Looney was hired as a Program Coordinator for the Arts and Science Department at the Open Learning Agency. In that role he was primarily responsible for overseeing the development and delivery of curriculum for distance education in both print and Web formats. When the Open University arm of OLA merged with the University College of the Cariboo to form Thompson Rivers University in 2005 he was offered and accepted his current position as Open Learning Program Coordinator for the Faculty of Arts where he liaises between the distance providers of the Open Learning Division and the face to face faculty in Arts.
