Executive Committee

Professor Michael Cowling has been a leader in educational technology for over 20 years and was the recipient of the Universities Australia 2020 AAUT Award for Teaching Excellence (Physical Sciences & Related Studies). He is currently a Professor in Computing Technologies in the STEM College at RMIT University, where he serves as Director, Hub for Apple Platform Innovation (HAPI), an Apple-focussed teaching/research space using novel computing platforms to create dynamic new experiences. He is the President (2023 to 2025) of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE), where he is also a Community Fellow, as well as the Vice-President of the Open Access Publishing Association (OAPA). He is also a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Advance HE UK). Through his mantra ‘pedagogy before technology’, he fosters thoughtfulness in technology for students, educators and the public.

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Dr Elaine Huber is an Adjunct Professor at Liverpool John Moores University (UK) and Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Business School. A Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she is a nationally recognised leader in co-design, curriculum innovation and institutional change. With over 30 years of experience in adult education, Elaine brings a deeply student-centred philosophy to her work, underpinned by a commitment to active and collaborative learning. Her leadership has been acknowledged through multiple institutional and sector-level awards, including a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Leadership and Mentoring. She has led major strategic initiatives—including the Connected Learning at Scale (CLaS) program at the University of Sydney—supporting high-quality learning experiences in large-enrolment business education.

Elaine has been a member of ASCILITE since 2010 and has been on the Executive since Dec 2020. Elaine Co-Leads two portfolios, TELAS and Women in Academic Leadership. She was a member of the conference organising committee in 2012, has been a mentor on the AMP and is also a member of the TELEdvisors SIG, the Business Education SIG and the 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 Full paper (2022), best concise paper (2017) and best poster (2012) 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 and has co-led its operationalisation.

Elaine’s research spans co-design, educational evaluation, women’s leadership, online assessment, and digital pedagogies. She has presented at over 30 conferences, both international and national, has given many invited talks and Keynotes and has authored over 40 peer reviewed publications. As a passionate advocate for gender equity, she is also an alumna of Homeward Bound, a global leadership initiative for women with a background in STEMM.

Through her educational consultancy, Elaine continues to support institutions and academic leaders in building inclusive, future-focused learning environments. She also coaches academics and third space practitioners in finding their voice and reaching their potential.

 

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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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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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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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Vickel Narayan is a Senior Lecturer (Digital Learning) at Massey University. Vickel has held similar roles in the last 10 years at four large higher education institutes in New Zealand and Australia and has over 15 years of experience in education. He completed his PhD (Education) from the University of Murdoch in Perth, in 2017. Vickel is an active researcher in the scholarship of teaching and learning domain (SoTL), particularly designing for learning, staff development and the scholarship of technology enhanced learning (SoTEL). He has a keen interest in social media and mixed mobile virtuality (MMR) and how they could be used for developing authentic and student-determined teaching and learning experiences. Vickel is particularly interested in exploring contemporary mobile and social media tools and pedagogies for creating, nurturing and maintaining virtual communities, and social connectedness, fostering social constructivism and enabling authentic learning and heutagogy. He is interested in design-based research and its implications on learning, teaching, and design.

Vickel is an active researcher in the scholarship of technology-enhanced learning domain and has published over 80 research articles that include 14 journal publications, 2 journal editorials, 14 booked chapters, over 50 conference contributions including one best paper award, three learning and teaching excellence awards and two study awards. He is the co-lead editor for the Pacific Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (PJTEL), associate editor for the AJET Journal and reviews for several internationally ranked journals in the domain, such as BJET, Computers & Education and Computers in Human Behavior. You can view Vickel’s researcher profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6833-706X

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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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Pennie White is a passionate educator and researcher with leadership expertise in professional learning, innovative curriculum development, literacy, digital technology, and inclusive practice. Pennie has over twenty-five years’ experience in teaching, coaching, researching and leading innovative education initiatives in cross-sector partnerships involving schools, higher education, government, and industry. Her research expertise in the field of education includes professional learning, innovative pedagogy, digital technology and inclusion.

Pennie is also an active contributor to the Deakin University Accessibility Champions 2022-2024 who were recognised with Teaching and Learning Award from ADCET each year. In 2023, Pennie was admitted as a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

In 2024 Pennie has been part of the newly formed Deakin Learning Analytics Champions, exploring and promoting the potential uses of the new dashboard with Unit Chairs.

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