Baraniuk honored for Connexions work

Rice professor Richard Baraniuk has been named a World Technology Award winner for his pioneering work on Connexions, the university’s Web site to develop and freely share scholarly content.

	RICHARD BARANIUK

Baraniuk, the Victor E. Cameron Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, won for education, one of 20 categories recognized by the World Technology Network that included arts, sciences, communications and more. The awards went to those doing innovative work that will have the greatest likely long-term significance in their fields, according to the organization.

“It was a great honor to receive the award, especially since it will bring more attention to Connexions and our globe-spanning community of users,” said Baraniuk, who also presented an overview of the state-of-the-art of education technology at the World Technology Summit event held in New York City July 15 and 16.

Connexions was founded in 1999 and has since grown to incorporate more than 13,000 modules — or learning objects — that can stand alone or be part of any number of collections assembled by users for formal courses or their own learning pleasure. The pace of educators’ contributions has been picking up steam; the 10,000-module milestone was passed only three months ago.

For a list of all the World Technology award winners, click here.