Faculty Profile: Dr. Lina Zhou

“Online courses give students greater control over their education.”

Lina Zhou, an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at UMBC, possesses a strong background in both business and technology subjects. Over the years, Dr. Zhou has worked for several educational institutions in the U.S. (Eller College of Business at the University of Arizona), and in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) and Beijing, China (Computer Science Department, Beijing University).

To her teaching—both online and face-to-face—she brings a wealth of hands-on expertise from years of research, undertaking numerous large-scaled projects funded by government agencies and industry. The result: teaching that is relevant in today’s ever-evolving IT world. At UMBC, Dr. Zhou stays actively involved in leading-edge research and development that aims to improve knowledge management and human decision making by applying and adapting intelligent technologies. Her current research interests include deception detection, group communication, speech interaction, and ontology and the Semantic Web.

Zhou believes that online education offers numerous advantages, most notably a student’s ability to determine learning parameters that face-to-face courses do not. Lina says, “Online courses give students greater control over their education—when and where they learn subject matter.” Dr. Zhou comments further, “However, online courses require some level of transformative learning and adaptation of teaching strategies in order to receive and deliver the best education experience. Online students, for example, should take advantage of online discussions to reflect on their own knowledge and assumptions and to consider new perspectives from other peers.”

Additional information about Dr. Lina Zhou can be found at http://userpages.umbc.edu/~zhoul/.