ROGER SCHANK is one of the world's leading researchers in AI, learning theory, cognitive science, and the building of virtual learning envirnonments. He is President and CEO of Socratic Arts, a company whose goal is to to design and implement low-cost story-based learning by doing curricula in schools, universities, and corporations. Socratic Arts works with universities and corporations to develop customized degree and certificate programs. In addition, Socratic Arts works with schools to create inventive new online curricula. He recently founded XTOL (Experiential Teaching On Line) a company that creates on line, learn by doing, masters degree programs and short courses for universities.
In 2000, Schank won the Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance award of the ASTD.
Schank founded the Institute for the Learning Sciences (ILS) at Northwestern University in1989 with support from Andersen Consulting. ILS had a staff of 170, including research and teaching faculty, programmers and content specialists, over 50 graduate students and nearly 30 interns and visiting staff. Schank is a strong critic of today's educational system. His approach to learning, and training in a corporate setting, involves helping people learn by doing, allowing people to make mistakes in a safe learning environment and sharing war stories with leading teachers and experts. This effort has led to his highly successful role as a teacher, consultant, and lecturer, as well as developer of extremely powerful and effective multimedia training tools.
Schank is one of the world's leading researchers in artificial intelligence and applying cognitive learning theory to education. He has written more than 25 books including Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools; Virtual Learning: A Revolutionary Approach to Building a Highly Skilled Workforce, Coloring Outside the Lines: Raising a Smarter Kid by Breaking All the Rules, Dynamic Memory: A Theory of Learning in Computers and People, Engines for Education, Designing World-Class E-Learning, Making Minds Less Well Educated Than Our Own, Scrooge Meets Dick and Jane, and Lessons in Learning, e-Learning, and Training.
Schank is the John Evans Professor Emeritus in computer science, education and psychology at Northwestern University, where he founded the Institute for the Learning Sciences. Previously he was a professor of computer science and psychology at Yale University and director of the Yale Artificial Intelligence Project. He was a visiting professor at the University of Paris VII, a faculty member at Stanford University and research fellow at the Institute for Semantics and Cognition in Switzerland. Schank is a fellow of the AAAI and was the founder of the Cognitive Science Society and co-founder of the Journal of Cognitive Science. He holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Texas.
Before founding Socratic Arts, Schank founded and served as Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Cognitive Arts Corp., a provider of goal-based multi-media simulation training to Fortune 500 corporations and Ivy League universities. Cognitive Arts was formed in partnership with Northwestern University to market the software initially developed at the Institute for the Learning Sciences. Earlier, he founded and served as president of two software development companies: Cognitive Systems, Inc. (specializing in the development of knowledge-based natural language computer systems) and CompuTeach, Inc. (creating and marketing educational software for personal computers).