Alexander Renkl studied psychology in Aachen and Marburg (Germany) and finished his diploma degree in 1987. From 1988 to 1990 he worked as a graduate student at the Max-Planck Institute for Psychological Research, Munich (Germany), and received his doctoral degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1991. As Assistant Professor, he spent several years (1991 to 1997) at the University of Munich before he became a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Education in Schwäbisch Gmünd (Germany). Since 1999, he is working at the University of Freiburg as Professor of Educational and Developmental Psychology. He has (co-) authored over 300 publications in scientific journals, conference proceedings, books, and journals for practitioners. These publications have substantial impact (Google Scholar: h = 65; retrieved 06/29/2017). His main research areas are example-based learning, instructional explanations, and self-explanations, learning from multiple representations (multimedia learning), learning strategies, learning by journal writing, and teachers' pedagogical and psychological knowledge.

Vincent Aleven is an associate professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. (Don't be fooled, he is Dutch!) His research is about advanced learning technologies, often in the area of K-12 mathematics learning. His work is grounded in cognitive theory and in theories of self-regulated learning. He conducts most of his research studies in schools. He also has created tools with which non-programmers can created intelligent tutoring systems. He was co-editor (with Roger Azevedo) of the International Handbook of Metacognition in Computer-Based Learning Environments. He is co-editor in chief of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. He has over 250 publications to his name.