Keynote speakers
Sir John Daniel spent 17 years as a university president in Canada (Laurentian University) and the UK (Open University) before joining UNESCO as Assistant Director-General for Education in 2001 and serving as President of the Commonwealth of Learning from 2004 to 2012. He has been closely involved in the development of open and distance learning for 40 years. Best known among his 300+ publications are his books Mega-Universities and Knowledge Media: Technology Strategies for Higher Education and Mega-Schools, Technology and Teachers: Achieving Education for All. Knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1994 he has received 31 honorary doctorates from universities in 17 countries.
Tian Belawati is a professor and currently Rector of Universitas Terbuka (Indonesia Open University). She has extensive experience in research, teaching, and administration of a large-scale open university system, which serves over 600,000 students residing in Indonesia and overseas.
She obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Adult Education from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and a Master of Education in Management of Distance Education at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She has written many papers presented in national and international conferences as well as published in national and international books and academic journals.
Professor Belawati was elected Rector of Universitas Terbuka in 2009 and has taken decisive actions to mobilize effort in working with stakeholders to improve the quality of ODL, develop greater public confidence in ODL, and establish collaboration with international as well as regional ODL institutions and associations.
She was Secretary General (2007–2009) and then President (2009-2010) of the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU). Professor Belawati served on the Election Committee of the International Council for Open and Distance Education—ICDE (2007–2009), and was co-opted to the Executive Committee in 2008. In the election held in 2011, the ICDE institutional membership elected her as a member of the Executive Committee for the period 2012–2015, and in January 2012 she was elected as President of ICDE.
Deborah Riemer is the Vice President of Assessment and Academic Quality at Ashford University in San Diego, California, where she leads a team of course development experts towards a mission of providing students innovative and high quality learning experiences. In 2004 she joined the institution to assist in the development of online courses and programs. Since then, she has focused on building scalable and efficient models for designing and implementing quality online courses. This has included continual refinement of processes while integrating best practices in online instructional design and assessment practice, creation of tools and gathering of resources to assist faculty, and providing professional development opportunities for faculty and staff. She has presented at numerous educational conferences on the subject. A testament to the impact of these efforts was the Making a Difference for Students award from Quality Matters presented to Ashford University in November of 2011. This award recognizes the institution for its coordinated, multi-year Quality Matters initiative demonstrating a large-scale, positive impact on the quality of online courses.
Student learning is at the heart of quality course design. Developing measures for assessing learning is critical to a culture of continual improvement and innovation. Deborah leads the University’s assessment efforts towards a collaborative and integrated approach that is interwoven with course and curriculum development. She continues to explore the development of new models of assessment practice that are comprehensive, efficient, scalable, and replicable. The focus of Deborah’s work in learning outcomes assessment and online instructional design practices is informed by more than 17 years of experience in non-traditional formats of higher education.
Gregor Kennedy joined the Centre for the Study of Higher Education in 2011 when he was appointed as The University of Melbourne’s inaugural Director of eLearning. Prior to this appointment Gregor worked in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University for over a decade. For six years he was the Head of the Biomedical Multimedia Unit, where he oversaw educational technology research and development for the Faculty, and more recently he coordinated the activities of the Melbourne University Virtual Environments for Simulation research and development lab in the Health and Biomedical Informatics Research Unit.
As Director of eLearning, Gregor leads the University's strategy in technology enhanced learning and teaching. While a key member of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, he also has accountabilities to the Office of the Provost at the University. He chairs the University’s eLearning Advisory Group, is a member of the University’s Teaching and Learning Development Committee, and is an Executive member of the Institute for a Broadband Enabled Society.
Gregor is an international leader in educational technology research and development, particularly in the context of higher education. His critical, evidence-based investigations of ‘Net Generation’ students have provided significant insight into how staff and students use technology and emerging technology-based tools in higher education. He has longstanding research interests in contemporary learning design and emerging technologies, educational technology research and evaluation, computer-based interactivity and engagement, 3D immersive virtual environments, and the use of electronic measures and analytics in computer-based learning environments. He has published widely in these areas and is a regular keynote and invited presenter at local and international conferences.
Gregor has been involved in number of major curriculum development and renewal projects, and has led many design and development teams to create technology-enhanced or enabled courses, subjects and resources, particularly in health science education. He has used a variety of instructional models and frameworks in this work, as well as a range of digital media and communications technologies, including interactive multimedia, Web 2.0 technologies and learning management systems. He has designed educational programs and resources to support a range of educational contexts including face-to-face, fully online, self directed, group-based, mobile and blended learning environments.
Bob Spence is a widely known expert in the development of e-learning and workforce strategies, the management of e-learning development teams, processes to enhance quality of e-learning content and the use of technology to enhance human performance. During his career, Bob has been recognised through numerous awards, recorded interviews, journal articles and he has presented at more than 60 conferences in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, UK and USA.
After pioneering the use of computer-based training at a major Australian financial institution in the early 1980s where he led a team of 32 learning and graphic designers that developed hundreds of hours of computer-based training on CD-ROM, his experience was enriched when, in 1999, he joined a ‘top three’ professional services firm as Director, e-Learning Asia Pacific. After moving on to another large Australian bank in 2002, he led that organisation’s successful and internationally awarded implementation of e-learning.
Bob advocates strongly for the development of people capability to enable the achievement of performance potential and since retiring from full-time work in 2007, he has shared his knowledge and experiences through a variety of mentoring, consulting and speaking engagements and through voluntary work in the community education sector.
Bob was named Learning Leader at the LEARNX 2009 Conference and is currently a co-opted board member of a large and very active community college. His qualifications include an MBA with a major in human resources from the University of New England.