William D. Armitage, Assistant Professor of Information Technology at the University of South Florida's Polytechnic campus, received his B.A. from Rhode Island College (1966) and his M.S. in Computer Science (1978) and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (1999) from the University of Rhode Island. He has previously held several information technology staff positions in higher education, and has served as a consultant in systems analysis and network design and implementation for many agencies and commercial enterprises. He also founded and managed one of the earliest computer retailing firms (in 1976).

Dr. Armitage's research interests include communications for robotics, computational intelligence, and the use of technology infrastructure and new pedagogical approaches in maximizing learning, especially in an online environment. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the IEEE's Computer, Computational Intelligence and Communications Societies. He has participated as Co-PI on National Science Foundation (NSF) and Office of Naval Research (ONR) funded projects.

Since 2006 he has served as Interim Chair of the Department of Information Technology.

I've been working at USF Polytechnic since:
fall, 2002

How long I've been teaching:
Most all of my life, in one form or another. Where formal courses are concerned, since around the mid-90's.

What are some of the signature assignments you have given your students?
I like to make students speculate, engage in "what if" discussions. Breakthroughs are events which cannot be predicted, but which are almost bound to occur in some way that will affect students in their future careers. By encouraging students to "blue sky" it, I try to prepare them for a career in which at least several major technology "earthquakes" will occur during their working lives.

The accomplishment I am most proud of is...
without a doubt, a future accomplishment. I really hope I haven't done my best work yet.

Until now, most of my students didn't know...
the length of a nanosecond (a little under a foot).

If I weren't a professor, I would be...
a systems architect, a writer, or a musician.

My favorite memory from my undergraduate experience is...
anything I can actually remember from that long ago!

My favorite thing on campus is...
well, not a "thing." The people are what I like most about USF Polytechnic.

What I like most about the students at USF Polytechnic...
the variety! Traditional, non-traditional, "younger," "older" - all kinds. Keeps things interesting.

Two prime areas that have held back robots from success in some critical areas (search & rescue, for example) are power and communications. I'm interested in how use of the inherently limited and shared bandwidth of wireless communications can be optimized and regulated to allow critical activities to succeed, even in the face of way too much data versus way too little bandwidth.

As we move into the online environment for delivering course content, serious questions are raised about assessment security and overall effectiveness of the online learning experience. I'm interested in how the inherent advantages of the online delivery mode can be translated into the most effective pedagogical experience for the student.

"Whatever works." Different people learn best in different ways. My aim is to provide as many ways as possible for people to learn. Whether the most effective way for an individual to learn a concept is by reading, watching, listening or doing, I'd like to come up with a way of providing their path of choice. I believe the online environment, being cut free from the limited time in a classroom, provides an unprecedented opportunity to provide information in many modes, letting the student choose which mode or modes work for them.