The IMS Technical Advisory Board Executive Committee is responsible for identifying and prioritizing the technical work of IMS Global. As technical leaders, their expertise impacts the future direction and priorities IMS takes to transition education to digital.
Members of the TAB Executive Committee
Gary Driscoll, Senior Strategic Advisor, ETS
Gary Driscoll is a Senior Strategic Advisor for ETS. He is engaged in a wide variety of key strategic ETS assessment technology efforts that encompass: scoring, item banking, test assembly, natural language essay scoring, web based constructed response scoring, state-of-the-art score reporting, automated Score Report QC, statistical analysis, and computer based test delivery. These technologies touch virtually every test that ETS creates, administers, and scores. Gary has been awarded three educational technology patents in these areas. He also works closely with the ETS Center for Advanced Technology and Neuroscience to anticipate developments in technology beyond the existing planning horizon to use such insights to better prepare ETS for the changes and opportunities stemming from those developments.
He is a member of the IMS Global Technical Advisory Board and co chair of the IMS GLC Accessible Portable Item Protocol (APIP). Gary was a Learning Impact 2007 Platinum Award winner. He has served as an expert judge for the Learning Impact Awards in 2009, 2011, and 2012 and was a Learning Impact 2010 Panelist for "Moving from Information Technology to Useful Information". He was an Expert Panel member at alt-i-lab 2003 and a Demonstrators Evaluation Committee judge at alt-i-lab 2006.
Linda Feng, Software Architect, Oracle
Initiative strategy, integration and product development for the Higher Education market. Linda has over 20 years of experience in database server and applications product development. While at Oracle, Linda successfully managed the development of Oracle's Spatial Data Option technology, integrating it into the Oracle 7 server architecture. Her work with this project earned her a patent for multidimensional indexing techniques present in Oracle's Spatial Cartridge today. Linda has also guided numerous application development projects ranging from Oracle Public Sector Financials to Oracle Student Systems. In the last several years, she served as co-chair of the IMS Global Learning Initiative Learning Information Services Working Group, helping to bring a new Enterprise interoperability standard to market.
David Gappa, Software Architect, SAFARI Montage®
David has 20 years experience in software development, the past 12 years in the K-12 market. He currently leads the design and development of all software products, manages custom projects, researches new technologies, and works closely with the hardware team to bring products to enterprise environments. Prior to joining SAFARI Montage®, David developed vehicle emission testing software based on EPA standards for SPX Corporation. David has a Masters of Science degree in Computer Science from Western Michigan University.
Tom Hoffman, Senior Development Leader, Measured Progress
Thomas Hoffmann's has worked in the education field for over 20 years. His work over the last decade has focused on the nexus of technology, assessment, and accessibility. Tom is one of the co-inventors of the NimbleTools Assessment System, winner of the 2008 da Vinci award. He has been an active member of the APIP Working Group as a Co-Chair since the group's inception in 2010. Tom works as the Senior Development Leader at the Innovation Lab at Measured Progress.
Rick Johnson, Chief Technology Officer, VitalSource
Technologies, Inc.
Rick Johnson is the Chief Technology Officer, and one of the founders of VitalSource Technologies, Inc. VitalSource, a division of the Ingram Content Group, is the maker of Bookshelf®, the most widely used platform for delivery of electronic textbooks in the world. As CTO, Rick manages the strategic direction of the fast growing platform, guiding the architecture, and implementation of its clients and systems.
Rick's career has been focused on bringing together his three passions: technology, publishing, and education. He is a frequent speaker on electronic textbooks, their integration into an institutional environment, and how the accessibility needs of individual students can best be accommodated thru such delivery. He served on the working groups responsible for version 2 and version 3 of the EPUB standard, is on the executive committee for the IMS Global Learning Consortium, and is the co-inventor of 3 international patents dealing with electronic books and their distribution.
Prior to Ingram and VitalSource, Rick spent more than 12 years with Apple Computer, Inc. As a Senior National Consulting Engineer for them he was instrumental in the implementation of complex solutions for many higher education and corporate customers, and received numerous national and international awards.
A graduate of the communication and business departments of Biola University in 1984, Rick has lived in the Phoenix area with his family since they moved from Southern California in 1991. Married to his wife Susie for almost 30 years, together they have raised two children, and are very active in their church and community. Rick serves on the board of directors for several non-profit ministries.
Brian Knotts, Senior Vice President, Global Architecture, Ellucian
As senior vice president of global architecture, Brian works with product management, IT, services, and our Collaborative partners to assure that our solutions are aligned with common technology architectures and processes. By designing a global architecture to support our products and services, Brian and his team help Ellucian bring the right solutions to market faster and help all of our customers build a better unified digital campus.
Mostly recently, Brian was senior vice president at SunGard Infinity where his primary responsibility included building the company's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering and transforming legacy products into solutions and services that could be delivered via the Infinity platform.
Brian has been with Ellucian for more than 20 years working in technology research and product development. He has extensive management experience in both the higher education and financial services software industries.
Wilbert Kraan, Assistant Director, CETIS
Wilbert joined CETIS in 2002, and was initially tasked with writing articles about education technology developments for a wide audience, as well as the development of the home grown content management system. From there, he entered specification development work, starting with IMS Content Packaging 1.1.4, moving on to become the chair of the Content Packaging 1.2 group. That specification has recently been turned into the first ISO standard for educational content.
Wilbert also worked on software architectures, first in a partnership between JISC, the Australian Department of Education Science and Training, Surf foundation of the Netherlands and the New Zealand Ministry of Education. Later, he moved into Enterprise Architecture modelling, and was instrumental in introducing the ArchiMate Modelling language to the UK higher education sector.
More recently, Wilbert has championed the IMS Question and Test Interoperability 2.1 specification. As a co-chair of the IMS working group, he has worked with content publishers and software developers on maturing and profiling the specification.
Wilbert has a long standing interest in semantic web technologies. As such, he developed and maintains the CETIS linked data sets, has integrated it with a variety of other datasets, and constructed reports and visualisations.
David Lapides, Director, Education Solutions Program Management, SMART Technologies
A former educator, David Lapides has been with SMART since 2004. He was Global Director of Education Policy and Practice until early 2011, when he became Global Director, Education Product Management. Prior to joining SMART, Lapides was Vice President of Operations for ExploreLearning, Inc., publishers of the award-winning online simulations for math and science known as Gizmos. He was Director of Product Development for the ActiveInk Corporation, providers of online curriculum and professional development materials. Previously Lapides was an instructor and researcher in the prestigious Computer Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was also Assistant Director for Lower-Division Writing. Lapides is a native of Memphis, Tennessee and a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Texas at Austin.
Jennifer Whiting, Sr. Manager Product Development,
Florida Virtual School
Florida Virtual School
After several years as a middle school and high school teacher in a traditional classroom setting, Jennifer Whiting joined FLVS in 1997. FLVS had just been created, and needed experienced teachers who could both develop and teach new courses. Her chemistry course was the first science course offered by FLVS. Over the years, Ms. Whiting has assumed many roles such as an instructional design specialist, project manager of large instructional technology projects, director of information systems responsible for her school’s information technology infrastructure, and Chief Academic Officer overseeing curriculum development.
Today as the Senior Manager of Product Development, she develops new lines of business with innovative companies, bringing opportunities to FLVS in mobile learning, game based learning, and other emerging areas. Jennifer also works with FLVS Global, the division of the school that provides high quality FLVS courses and products outside the state of Florida. She heads the team that delivers FLVS solutions to learning management systems, and knows the importance of interoperable content well.
Ms. Whiting earned her Masters of Science degree in Instructional Technology and Distance Education from Nova Southeastern University. Her Bachelor of Science degree with Honors in Physics Education was awarded by the Florida Institute of Technology. Jennifer has worked with IMS Global Learning for many years, lending her secondary school knowledge to several work groups. She served as the co-chair for the Technical Advisory Board for 2 years.
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