Julie Oltman, PhD

Julie Oltman has a passion for learning through games that began with her 30+ years of soccer coaching at youth and college levels. Her belief that student-centered experiences that are driven by play have the potential to elicit deep and meaningful understandings eventually led her to pursue a Ph.D. in Education focused on game-based learning. For her dissertation, she developed an augmented-reality, place-based iPad game for elementary social studies.

More recently, she has explored how computational thinking and geospatial tools can be embedded effectively within curricula. She loves spending time talking and collaborating with classroom teachers to develop rich learning experiences.

At any point in time, you may find Julie playing or building a video game, coaching or watching the beautiful game (soccer), teaching teachers as an adjunct professor at Lehigh University, conducting educational research, or just working at her day job as the director of technology for Lehigh University Athletics.