Joel Foreman is an English professor whose career has focused on digital media and distance learning. In the late 1970s Foreman produced and directed several broadcast documentaries featured in this collection, including documentaries on the novelists William Styron, Rita Mae Brown, and Carlos Fuentes. In the 1980s he began studying the diffusion and impact of electronic media. As a practitioner of video journalism Foreman produced a number of documentaries for public television, also included in this collection, including programs for the Arts and Entertainment Network, the Discovery Channel, and other outlets. In 1996 Foreman started building web-based learning environments to support his own distance courses on the subject of virtual organization. His publications include a collection of essays, The Other Fifties: Interrogating Mid-century American Icons (University of Illinois Press, 1997), and several articles on such diverse topics as cultural studies in the classroom, computer-generated graphics, and the filmic representation of organizational dynamics. His most recent research in networked and distributed learning environments was conducted for the National Security Agency, for which he co-directed a 2-year project to design, construct, and assess learning modules for virtual problem-solving teams. Recent publications include articles on game-based learning, digital writing courses, and virtual organization.