Executive Committee

Michael is an award-winning technology educator and technology communicator with a keen interest in mixed reality education, computer science / technology education, and information technology in society. He is currently an Associate Professor in Information & Communication Technology at CQUniversity Australia, and is the founder of The CREATE Lab, which focuses on collaborative research and engagement around technology and education. He holds an Australian Government National Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning and is an Advance Queensland Community Digital Champion, as well as a previous partner in an Australian Office for Learning & Teaching (OLT) Innovation & Development grant and an ASCILITE Community Fellow.

His other appointments include as a consulting expert in information technology for the Australian Tertiary Education & Quality Standards Association (TEQSA), and an assessor for the Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT). His workshop series “Weaving Technology into the Fabric of the Classroom” has provided training for over 200 Queensland teachers on innovative technology, and as a CSIRO STEM Professional in Schools he presents technology to students as part of the Queensland state member of parliament supported “Professor Tech” program, and has written opinion pieces for national publications such as The Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Age, and the Brisbane Times.

He has also published in the ASCILITE journal, AJET, and is an experienced ASCILITE conference program committee member. He is a member of several ASCILITE Special Interest Groups (SIGs). He has been involved with the ASCILITE Community Mentoring Program (CMP) for several years, including a role as CMP coordinator, and attended the ASCILITE Spring into Excellence program in 2018. He was vice-president from 2021 to 2023, and is current president for the 2024 – 2025 period.

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Elaine is an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Business School. She is the Academic Director of Business Co-Design and leads a diversely skilled team of 30 staff, both professional (learning designers and media producers) and academic (educational developers and evaluation researchers). Her team work on strategic learning and teaching projects, with the latest – Connected Learning at Scale – which aims to transform the learning experience of their 14,000 business school students.

She has been teaching adults and designing curriculum for 24 years, with a move to the higher education sector in 2004. Elaine has a passion for blending technology with learning to create a rich student experience and she values the importance of supporting teachers in capability building. Her PhD is in evaluation of learning and teaching projects, but her research interests are wide and varied and include co-design in learning and teaching, issues of scale in education, methods for presenting interactive content, collaboration tools, digital literacies, and social media. She has also published (with Science colleagues), a curriculum design framework for flipped classrooms as well as meta-cognitive learning strategies in first year physics and maths.

Another area of research and interest is the design and implementation of professional development programs. Notable achievements include the International award winning Faculty Partnership Program which reframes professional development and incorporates elements of design-based research and communities of practice; a Macquarie University Vice
Chancellor’s award for Programs that Enhance Student Learning, for the design and delivery of the Tutor Induction Program.

Elaine has been a member of ascilite since 2010 and has been attending and presenting at conferences throughout. She was a member of the conference organising committee in 2012, has been a mentor for 2 years on the AMP and is also a member of the TELEdvisors SIG and the ascilite learning design SIG. She values such networking opportunities for the learning, sharing and collaboration opportunities they can provide. Elaine has also won an ASCILITE best poster and best concise paper awards. Elaine was an integral part of the committee that worked with ASCILITE’s Past President and Treasurer to finalise the conceptualisation of the TELAS framework.

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Mark Schier is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of New England. He has many years experience as a tertiary educator, most recently at the Swinburne University of Technology. He is also the ASCILITE Treasurer and has served as a member of the executive committee since 2017. Mark has been an active ASCILITE member since 2005, attending many annual conferences, reviewing papers, TELall blog posts and other activities. He was also an ASCILITE mentee in 2007, and a mentor in 2018 and strongly recommends this program to others. On the committee he has worked with the team to review and rewrite several policy documents, and improve their consistency and clarity.

Mark holds a Grad Cert in Learning and Teaching, and won an ALTC citation for contributions to student learning in 2009. Mark’s PhD is in neuroscience and his current discipline research interests are in the area of human sensory system measurements, particularly from the visual system. This provides some challenges to adapting technological tools in the teaching-research nexus, but the possibilities are huge.

His educational research interests involve adapting technology to promote and improve student learning and engagement, particularly for first year students in our changing educational environment.

Sue is the Head of School, School of Education, Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Science and Education at the University of New England (UNE) in Armidale. She is a long-term adult educator having begun teaching adults in 1989. Sue has previously been Chair of Research in the school and member of the ICT Education team. She has coordinated ICT education units in both undergraduate and postgraduate programs and supervised many HDR students. In 2007, Sue became aware of, and interested in, how adults engage with their learning in a virtual world. At this time, she created a space for students in Second Life to undertake virtual world activities. This led her to begin researching virtual worlds as an educational space and complete her doctorate on this topic.

Since this time, she has been a lead on an OLT grant exploring virtual professional experience (2011 to 2012) through VirtualPREX: Innovative assessment using a 3D virtual world with pre-service teachers. She was the recipient of an OLT citation award (2012) for “the innovative adaptation and expansion of virtual world technology to enhance learning and teaching in education and across disciplines” and four other OLT grants. She is also part of a team on a USA National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. She is currently the Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working (VWWG) group which she began in November 2009.

In early 2012 Sue became a co-mentor on the ASCILITE Community Mentoring Program. Since attending her first ASCILITE conference in 2009, Sue has published papers, conducted symposiums, displayed posters and been part of the ASCILITE Executive since 2012. Prior to being elected as Vice President, Sue chaired the ASCILITE Community Mentoring Program and ASCILITE Awards.

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Associate Professor Thom Cochrane

The University of Melbourne

Thomas is an Associate Professor of Technology Enhanced Learning in Higher Education in the Melbourne CSHE, MGSE, within the University of Melbourne.   Previously, he was an Academic Advisor and Senior Lecturer in educational Technology at Auckland University of Technology’s Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLAT).

Thom has been an active member of ASCILITE since 2003 and ALT since 2009. In 2011 Thomas received an ASCILITE Fellow award. Thomas is also one of the first SCMALT holders – Senior Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology (2018).

Thomas is also an AJET Associate Editor, and an editorial board member of RLT, BJET, and IJMBL and special issue guest editor of AJET and RLT. He is the coordinator of the ASCILITE Mobile Learning Special Interest Group. He is a regular reviewer for a number of educational technology journals including: CAE, BJET, AJET, CHB, IJMBL, JCHE, UAIS, and TLT, and received a top 1% reviewer on Publons in 2018.

In 2017 Thomas established the SOTEL Research Cluster, facilitating a research hub for Design Based Research and the inaugural annual SOTEL Symposium.

In 2017 he was a member of the team winning the AUT Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence, Teaching Innovation Award. He also established the CMALT cMOOC to support CMALT accreditation internationally.

His research interests include mobile learning, social media in education, communities of practice, and the scholarship of technology enhanced learning (SOTEL). His PHD thesis was titled: “Mobilizing Learning: Transforming pedagogy with mobile web 2.0”. Thomas has managed and implemented over 50 mobile learning projects, with a focus upon mlearning as a catalyst to enable student-generated content and student-generated learning contexts, bridging formal and informal learning environments. He was co-lead of the AKO Aotearoa funded 2-year national project NPF14LMD Learners and Mobile Devices. Thomas has a peer-reviewed research portfolio spanning 49 journal articles, 31 book chapters, and over 140 conference proceedings. He received best paper awards at ASCILITE 2009, ALT-C 2011, ALT-C 2012.

He has been invited to keynote at several international educational technology conferences including: 2012 Australian Moodle Moot, 2012 m-Libraries conference in the UK, the launch of UWS massive iPad project in February 2013, 2014 IBSA VET Practitioners Conference in Melbourne, and was an invited speaker at EdMedia2014 (Tampere, Finland). He was an Educator In Residence at the Disruptive Media Learning Lab, Coventry University in 2015 and 2017. Thomas was an invited keynote at University of Western Australia’s Mlearning Summit in September 2016.

You will find more on Thom’s background here.

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Sandy is a Senior Lecturer and Digital Learning Leader in the School of Management at the UniSA Business School, having joined the school in 1998. As the Digital Learning Leader she takes responsibility for working with academic colleagues to ensure a high standard of digital resources for all students studying courses from the School of Management. As a lecturer Sandy is involved in teaching and curriculum development for undergraduate students in both Australia and Hong Kong, as well as coordinating course work placements for final year undergraduates.

Sandy has a PhD (Business), Graduate Diploma in Education Studies (Digital Learning), Graduate Certificate in Education (University Teaching), and a Bachelor of Applied Science (Chemistry). Her PhD investigated the management of end-user computing and end-user development of small-scale information systems. In education, Sandy has a research interests in experiential learning with a focus on work placements, graduate qualities/enterprise skills, learning analytics, flipped and blended learning, business simulations and role play. All courses that she teaches have an experiential component with associated authentic assessment to ensure students are ready for the professional world as soon as they graduate.

Sandy’s affiliation with ASCILITE commenced at the 2002 Auckland conference when she first became a member. She has been a campus representative for many years, was Convenor for the 2016 ASCILITE conference and on the organising committee of the 2003 ASCILITE conference held in Adelaide. Her interest in the use of technology in teaching and learning has been sparked by her involvement in the ASCILITE community having attended all but one conference since 2002 and this has culminated in her completion of the inaugural cohort of the Grad Dip (Digital Learning). As a recent attendee to the Spring into Excellence Research School, Sandy intends to increase her research into TEL and would like to continue to be involved in this excellent initiative.

Sandy brings to the ASCILITE Executive her considerable teaching experience with the intention of raising the profile of ASCILITE and its excellent initiatives. She hopes to work with the executive to achieve a mutual sharing of knowledge and experience across the borders through webinars and shared resources for international scholars in the field.  In addition she hopes to maintain the enthusiasm that she experiences within the ASCILITE community and promote this with colleagues, in particular the research and conference aspects of the community.

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Kwong Nui is an associate dean of learning and teaching at SISTC after being the Learning, Teaching and Innovation Manager at International College of Management Sydney for a short term. Before this, she was a senior lecturer/learning and teaching consultant at altLAB, Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand from October 2020 to November 2022 (including a secondment as a senior lecturer/senior advisor at Graduate Research School from May 2022 to November 2022). From 2015 to September 2020, she was an academic developer/lecturer at the Centre for Academic Development, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Her research field is Information Communication Technologies (ICT) use in tertiary educational environments, focusing on ICT beliefs and practices of students and academics, which then informs the support for ICT use in teaching, learning and researching (TLR). The applied nature of her research aligns with her academic development role and directly informs TLR practices in higher education institutions. For example, the findings from her Ako Aotearoa Regional Hub Fund project in 2018 informed the need to support the use of ICT in doctoral research processes in her unit and other faculties at her institution at the time. Kwong Nui believes that she can make a strong contribution to ASCILITE community through her service and scholarship as well as to gain support from such an advanced community for her enthusiasm to develop her academic capabilities further that will lead her to a more confident involvement in the higher education domain.

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Petrea is a Professor of Digital Pedagogies and the Associate Head of School, Research in the School of Education at the University of Southern Queensland. Petrea has been an ASCILITE mentee and is regularly an ASCILITE mentor, a Women in Academic Leadership mentee and mentor, and has participated in the Spring into Research School. She promotes the annual ASCILITE conference and awards to her peers, and she has regularly presented at the conference. She was a lead editor and associate editor for Australasian Journal of Educational Technology (AJET), ASCILITE’s refereed academic journal and the 2009 Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) Fellow Award Commendation – Early Career.

Her research is situated in interrelated fields of educational technology including: Online engagement; Online presence; Teaching presence; Cognitive presence; Using technology to keep seriously ill learners connected to school; Cyberbullying; Critical thinking; Mobile learning; Online collaboration; Online communities of practice; Gender and STEM; Teacher development; ICT integration (P – 12); ICT integration (higher education and vocational education); ICT professional development; Online mentoring; eLearning; Blended learning and teaching; Online learning and teaching; Teaching and learning in higher education; Teacher Education; Pre-service teacher training and development; Makerspaces; TPACK; and Community of Inquiry. She has published and co-published in many international refereed books, journals and conference proceedings. In addition, Petrea has received six outstanding conference paper awards at international conferences, along with faculty, university and national awards for research and teaching.

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Robert  is an experienced education researcher, with a focus on educational psychology and digital pedagogy.

Beginning his career in America before moving to Australia, he has been a researcher in education for over 20 years and has won multiple teaching awards across both continents. His work on developing an innovative digital-based pedagogy for numeracy and literacy in the PRAXIS in America and LANTITE test in Australia has enabled hundreds of pre-service teachers to obtain registration, and his award-winning scholarly engagement has allowed him to pass these digital pedagogy strategies to educators throughout Australia, such as in pieces in The Conversation and Campus Morning Mail. 

Robert has been a member of ASCILITE for several years and sees it as an important professional development role as a public intellectual and scholar. Many of the connections Robert makes through ASCILITE have been taken back to CQUniversity as part of the Technology Enhanced Learning Community of Practice, which he co-leads. He has also published papers at previous ASCILITE conferences and is a multi-year participant in the ASCILITE Community Mentoring Program (CMP). Joining the committee would allow Robert to bring his digital pedagogy and mentoring skills to a wider ASCILITE audience, as well as providing an educational rigour to the committee with his background in educational psychology. 

 

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Hazel is the Learning and Teaching Consultant (Curriculum) in the Griffith Business School, based on the Gold Coast campus.

Hazel has worked in similar roles to her current one in higher education institutions across Australia for over 15 years. She joined ASCILITE in 2008 and has attended, presented at, and reviewed submissions for, many conferences over the last ten years. During this time she has also been involved in the ASCILITE Community Mentoring Program, first as a Mentee and then as a Mentor. In 2017, she was heavily involved with ASCILITE events, taking on the role as co-facilitator for the Learning Analytics Special Interest Group, attending the Spring into Excellence Research School, and as a member of the Organising Committee for the 2017 ASCILITE conference.

Hazel is undertaking her PhD in the field of Learning Analytics, using the Behaviour Change Wheel to design an adoption strategy for Learning Analytics to encourage individual staff to use Learning Analytics to inform and enhance their teaching practice. In addition to her ASCILITE conference papers, she has a range of publications including two journal article, two chapters in an edited book and co-editor of a book on mobile learning. All of these are in the field of online and blended learning and many are the result of successful collaborations with academic staff with whom she worked on projects to enhance student experiences.

Her contributions to the field of Technology Enhanced Learning have been recognised in a number of ways recently including attendance and scholarship for the Doctoral Consortium at LAK16, (Learning Analytics & Knowledge) conference in Edinburgh, Scotland; winner of Best Concise Paper Award at ASCILITE 2016 conference; and recently awarded a Designing with OER (DOER) Fellowship by the Open Education Group.

 

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