Marc Alier, an Associate Professor at the Politecnical University of Catalonia (UPC), specializes in computer science, information systems, e-learning, IT Ethics and more. With a computer science engineering degree and a Ph.D. in Sustainability, he has contributed significantly to the Moodle community and has authored over 160 academic publications. Alier currently serves as the academic director of the Engineering Education Ph.D. program and teaches multiple courses at UPC’s Barcelona School of Informatics.
Hi there! My name is Marc Alier and I’m an Associate Professor at the Politecnical University of Catalonia (UPC) since 2002. My range of interests include computer science and information systems, e-learning, history and ethics of computing, as well as podcasting and building guitars.
I hold an engineering degree in computer science and a Ph.D. in Sustainability from UPC. I have over 25 years of experience in research and software development related to e-learning ( in the 90’s I designed and developed a couple of forgotten Learning Management Systems (LMS) and educational content authoring tools). I ocalionally create online courses and MOOCs My Youtube Channel.
I’ve been developing and contributing to the Moodle community since 2004, designing and implementing core functionalities such as the Wiki module, the Webservices layer, and the IMS LTI consumer. Since 2021 my research interest lies in the intersection of education and IA. Over the years, I’ve authored more than 160 academic publications in journals and conferences. For a list of publications and other research information:
I am a member of the EduSteam Reseach Group.
At the Doctoral School of UPC I am academic director of the Ph.D. program in Education in Engineering Sciences and Technology.
At the Barcelona School of Informatics I currently teach.
From 1997 to 2005 Founder, CEO and CTO of Ludoland Informàtica S.L. a small software development company specialized on back-end web development.
From 2004 to 2015 Academic director of several Masters and Post-degree courses (Information management and Business Intelligence with SAP (2004-2012), Software development for PDA’s and mobile phones(2005-2006), Cloud Computing(2009,2012) and Community Management (2014-2015) at https://www.talent.upc.edu
From 2014 to 2015 I was Director of the Institute of Sciences of Education at UPC.
From 2019 to March 2023 deputy director of the Director of Educational Inovation ar the Institute of Sciences of Education at UPC in the management team of Ariadna Llorens.
From Sept 2021 Academic Coordinator of the PHD Program in Science, Engineering and Technology Education
I’m also a (really) prolific podcaster at
marc.alier (at) upc.edu https://twitter.com/ludo