Sara McNeil is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of the Learning, Design and Technology graduate program at the University of Houston. She teaches courses in instructional design, the collaborative design and development of multimedia and the visual representation of information. She has won numerous teaching awards, including three University of Houston awards for Distinguished Leadership in Teaching, Distance Education Teaching, and Teaching Excellence. She was also named the Outstanding Faculty Member in a Distance Education program, a national teaching award from the University Continuing Education Association.

Dr. McNeil is the Managing Editor of the Technology, Instruction, Cognition and Learning Journal and a past Special Interest Group chair of the American Education Research Association. Her multimedia projects include the design and development of Digital History (http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu), a comprehensive resource that provides teachers and students with a wealth of high quality, historical resources at no charge. Digital History represents an effort to reinvent history teaching by giving teachers and students the resources and tools they need to interpret the past for themselves using over 5,000 primary sources in film, art, and music as well as a complete United States history textbook. Digital History has been named one of the Top 5 resources in U.S. history and has been selected for the National Endowment for the Humanities EdSITEment list of exemplary online resources.

Dr. McNeil also researches, publishes and presents internationally about emerging technologies in educational environments. She and her graduate students have created a website for K-16 teachers to help them select an appropriate web 2.0 tool for a specific task such as communication, collaboration, or problem-solving (http://newtech.coe.uh.edu). She also teaches graduate courses about using and evaluating emerging technologies in educational environments and is a consultant to schools concerning 21st century learning and technology.