Dr. Allison Rossett, long time Professor of Educational Technology at San Diego State University, is also a consultant in training and technology-based performance systems, and a member of the HRD Hall of Fame, TRAINING magazine's 'virtual' and elite Hall of Fame. Her 2002 book is The ASTD E-learning Handbook: Best Practices, Strategies and Case, published by McGraw-Hill. She is the co-author of Beyond the Podium: Delivering Training and Performance to a Digital World, winner of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) Instructional Communications award, 2002.

Allison is a native New Yorker, ping-pong champion in her youth and yo-yo'er in training. A keynoter at conferences and events all over the world, she teaches classes and consults on need assessment and new media learning and performance. Rossett's book, First Things Fast: A Handbook for Performance Analysis and free web tool, won the International Society for Performance Improvement's Instructional Communications award in 1999.

Some of Allison's best known works are, "Designing Under the Influence: Instructional Design for Multimedia Training," and "Training and Organizational Development: Siblings Separated at Birth," both published in TRAINING Magazine, and "That was a Great Class, But...," in Training and Development. She published "Confessions of a Web Dropout" in the August, 2000 issue of TRAINING Magazine.

Rossett teaches regularly at SDSU: Seminar in Curriculum and Technology for the joint doctoral programs; Advanced Seminar in Instructional Design; Seminar in Performance Technology; and the introductory educational technology class, EDTEC 540. Her students are educators in diverse settings, such as K-12 schools, government, industry and higher education. What they and she have in common is a passion for learning and performance improvement.

Rossett's also has an active life outside the campus. Her clients are a who's who of global companies and organizations, such as Microsoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Coca-Cola, Diamond Technology Partners, Tricon (Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut), Ford Motor Company, CISCO, and the Getty Conservation Institute. She has served on Advisory Boards for IBM, Eli Lilly, LGuide, and ETEC. Two projects of which she is particularly proud are the Bilingual Instructional Technologies program, a successful collaboration with the San Diego County Department of Education to develop bilingual and magnet teachers in instructional design and technologies, and long-term systemic professional development programs for corporate educators at Digital Equipment Corporation and AT&T.