Profile

Dr. Fatimah Wirth

Instructional Designer

Bio

Dr. Fatimah Wirth is the Instructional Designer for Georgia Tech Professional Education and an Instructor for one of the NASA Electronic Professional Development Network (ePDN) courses. Dr. Wirth joined Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. She taught face-to-face for 12 years at an institution of higher learning before she joined Georgia Tech. As an Instructional Designer, she used the ASSURE model of instructional design to assist faculty in developing their online courses. Her in-depth knowledge of how students seek help in an online class from her doctoral research entitled “Help Seeking in an OnlineEnvironment” has helped shape and create more robust online courses and more positive learner-based performance outcomes. In 2008, she helped successfully write a NASA CAN proposal. Georgia Tech Professional Education was awarded the 5 year almost $3 million NASA CAN in early 2009. Based on this award, she created the basic structure of the NASA ePDN online courses. These courses are offered for free to all middle school STEM teachers who are U.S. citizens in the United States and around the world. The NASA ePDN courses are collaborative in nature and are based on group work. In addition to creating the online structure, she has been teaching one of the online NASA ePDN Technology Integration Certificate courses for three years. She is also a certified Quality Matters Peer Reviewer. She has presented at a number of conferences based on the continuing research that she conducts with the NASA ePDN courses. Her research interest lies in cutting edge technology that can be used in the classroom to enhance the teaching and learning process.