Our Mission & Values
Our mission is to expand knowledge and understanding of behavior analysis and contextual behavioral science by making awesome online learning that is:
Our Team
Eric J. Fox, Ph.D.
Founder & Director
Eric founded Foxylearning in 2010 and totally named it after himself. He's been doing instructional design, behavior analysis, and web development for over 20 years, if you can believe that.
Dr. Eric J. Fox holds a doctorate in Learning & Instructional Technology from Arizona State University and a master’s degree in behavior analysis from the University of Nevada, Reno. He has two decades of experience in instructional design and previously served as a faculty member in the psychology department of Western Michigan University, Dean of Instruction at Saybrook University, Director of Instructional Design for Altius Education, Senior Content Developer at Cengage Learning, and Director of Educational Technology for The Ohio State University College of Medicine. His love of learning, technology, and behavioral science is coupled with an unhealthy affinity for Batman.
BIO
Nicole L. Bank, MS, BCBA
CEU Coordinator & Content Jedi
Nicole joined Foxylearning in 2018 and considers it the best decision of her life (note that this is mere speculation, as she has never publicly said anything remotely like this). She also runs
Current Contents in ABA and maintains the corresponding ABA-specific research database.
Nicole Bank is a BCBA and Information Science PhD candidate. She studied Psychology and Speech, Language and Hearing at the University of Colorado and then Behavior Analysis at the University of North Texas. Nicole spent her 20-year professional career sharing the benefits of behavior analytic technology to families and caregivers of children with developmental disabilities in Colorado, North Texas and Brazil. She supports the field of behavior analysis as a member of ABAI and TxABA and a founding member of Four Corners ABA. She is finishing a doctoral degree in information science with two goals: to assist professional behavior analysts in accessing and using research to inform evidence-based practice and to share the benefits of single-subject research with the information science community. She currently runs Current Contents in ABA and maintains the corresponding ABA-specific research database.
BIO
Daniel J. Moran, Ph.D., BCBA-D
ACBS Ambassador
DJ served as our first CEU Coordinator from 2010-18 until he realized he had better things to do. Now he helps us support our work with the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS). He is a former president of ACBS and is the founder of
Pickslyde Consulting.
Dr. Daniel J. Moran (aka “DJ”) has a doctorate in Clinical/School Psychology from Hofstra University and has 20 years of experience applying behavioral principles in clinical and busines environments. His specialties include applied behavior analysis, organizational behavior management, government consulting, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), leadership consulting, behavior-based safety (BBS), innovation training, sales coaching, and executive coaching. He has served in elected positions for the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science and other national and state organizations and is the founder of the MidAmerican Psychological Institute in Chicago. DJ also coauthored ACT in Practice, a professional book focused on complex, applied behavior analysis.
BIO
Our Tutorial Authors
Linda A. LeBlanc, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Dr. Linda A. LeBlanc is the President of LeBlanc Behavioral Consulting. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. She received her Ph.D. in 1996 from Louisiana State University and previously served on the psychology faculties at Claremont McKenna College (1997-1999), Western Michigan University (1999-2008), and Auburn University (2009-2012).
BIO
Norman Peterson, Ph.D.
Author of An Introduction to Verbal Behavior
Dr. Norm Peterson recently retired as the Director of Operations at the Foundation for Behavioral Resources. He earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from Western Michigan University, where he was one of the first graduates of that department’s doctoral program in Behavior Analysis. Prior to his work at the Foundation, Dr. Peterson also served as a faculty member at Western Michigan University and as a senior HR Consultant at Consumers Energy.
BIO
Jamie Severtson, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Coauthor of Teaching Listener Responding to Children with Autism
Dr. Jamie Severtson is the Clinical Director at Autism Learning Partners in Broomfield, Colorado. She is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst and a Licensed Behavior Analyst in the state of Missouri. Previously, she served as Assistant Professor and Graduate Coordinator of the Master of Arts in Applied Behavior Analysis Program at Southeast Missouri State University. Dr. Severtson holds a Ph.D. in Behavior Analysis from Western Michigan University.
BIO
Timothy Slocum, Ph.D.
Coauthor of Mastering the Basics of Visual Analysis
Dr. Timothy A. Slocum is a Professor and Department Head of the Department of Special Education & Rehabilitation at Utah State University. He earned his doctorate in Special Education at the University of Washington in 1991. Dr. Slocum received the 2011 Fred S. Keller Behavioral Education award from Division 25 of the American Psychological Association and the 2014 Ernie Wing Award for Excellence in Evidence-Based Education from the Wing Institute.
BIO
Kaneen Smyer, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Coauthor of Teaching Listener Responding to Children with Autism
Dr. Kaneen Smyer is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst who received her Ph.D. in 2012 from Auburn University. She has worked with individuals with developmental disabilities across the lifespan since 2003 and is the Program Director at Ivymount Corporation.
BIO
Katie Wolfe, Ph.D., BCBA-D
Coauthor of Mastering the Basics of Visual Analysis
Dr. Katie Wolfe is an assistant professor of Special Education in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of South Carolina, where she teaches coursework in applied behavior analysis and early childhood special education. She received her PhD in Disability Disciplines from Utah State University in 2013 and is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst.
BIO
Our Story
In 2002, Eric Fox was a doctoral student studying learning and instructional technology at Arizona State University and beginning to work on his dissertation. His background was in behavior analysis, having earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in behavior analysis from the University of Nevada, Reno. He had also spent a year in the doctoral program in behavior analysis at West Virginia University and another year working at Morningside Academy in Seattle. While he was in Reno, he developed a strong interest in relational frame theory (RFT) after participating in Steve Hayes’s research lab and co-authoring a key chapter in the first book-length treatment of RFT.
For his dissertation, he decided to investigate an RFT-informed
approach to teaching complex verbal concepts via a self-paced, online
tutorial. He needed content for his tutorial that involved complex
verbal concepts, so he selected RFT itself as the topic (partly because
people seemed to have trouble understanding it and partly because he
wanted to help disseminate it). Eric began developing an online tutorial
called An Introduction to Relational Frame Theory
using Flash, PHP, and MySQL, and released the first version to the
public in 2004. He made it available for free and encouraged instructors
to adopt it as a supplement for their courses so that he could gain
participants for his dissertation study. By 2005 he had completed his
dissertation and began a faculty position in the Psychology Department
at Western Michigan University, but kept his RFT tutorial online as a
free public service to anyone who still wanted to use it.
The tutorial remained online for several years after that and, to
Eric’s great surprise, continued to be used by many people (more than
10,000, in fact). Eventually, the time and money required to provide
technical support to users and to maintain the tutorial (web technology
changes rapidly, so even a web app with no content changes demands
regular updates of code and server software to remain functional and
secure) became so great that Eric realized he would somehow need to
monetize the tutorial to keep it alive. Thus, Foxylearning was born
(actually, “FoxyLearning” was born…but we stopped capitalizing the “L”
after a few years because we decided we were too cool for CamelCase).
The idea for Foxylearning originated while Eric was still at Western
Michigan University, but the website and company (with the RFT tutorial
as the only product) was not officially launched until 2010, after he
had moved to San Francisco to pursue other opportunities. Many of those
opportunities were not particularly gratifying, however, and he
continued to operate and grow Foxylearning as a side business. He was
encouraged because he saw a real need in behavioral science for
well-designed, high-quality elearning that was affordable to the average
student or professional. Over time, Foxylearning became a CEU provider
for Board Certified Behavior Analysts, collaborated with other authors
to create new tutorials, started offering research articles and
flashcards, and even began developing elearning for the Behavior Analyst
Certification Board itself. Eventually, in early 2015, Foxylearning had
grown to the point where Eric—now living in Columbus, Ohio—was able to
quit his “day job” and focus on Foxylearning full-time. For more details
on our history, check out the interactive timeline below!
