Tasneem is programme manager in digital education. Previously, she was a senior project coordinator and learning designer at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She has worked as a learning designer for the last nine years and has prior expertise in the field of user experience (UX). She has completed an MEd in Educational Technology and an MBA. Her work includes being involved in the development and research of MOOCs, as well as the development of formal online courses. She has a passion for learning, specifically the intersection of learning design and UX.

Shanali is a lecturer within the Academic Staff Development unit at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching. Her particular brief in the staff development team is to support part-time and non-permanent teaching staff. She currently teaches on the Postgraduate diploma in educational technologies, co-convening the Online Learning Design module. She has designed several online staff development short courses, and teaches two academic staff development online courses, Core Concepts in Learning and Teaching and An online introduction to Assessment. Shanali also has strong interests in relation to inclusivity and education, working largely in the practice space with colleagues to create more inclusive teaching and learning environments.

Laura is a professor was the first director of the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT), at the University of Cape Town, (2014 to 2020) having previously led UCT’s Centre for Educational Technology, OpenUCT Initiative and Multimedia Education Group. Her many roles in education over the years include academic, researcher, strategist, advocate, teacher, teacher-trainer and educational publisher. Threaded through all her work has been a focus on equity and digital inequality. These have permeated her research interests which focus on the changing nature of higher education in a digitally-mediated society and new forms of teaching and learning provision. She plays a key strategic and scholarly role in the areas of blended /online learning as well as in open education institutionally, nationally and internationally. Check out Laura’s newish blogsite https://czernie.weebly.com

Over the past 30 years, Sue Bennett has worked as a writer, educational designer, higher education teacher and university academic. Her work investigates how people engage with technology in their everyday lives and in educational settings. Her aim is to develop a more holistic understanding of people's technology practices to inform research, practice and policy. She has been researching design thinking and learning design since 1999. She is currently a professor of education at the University of Wollongong. Narend holds a Master’s degree from Durham University, and a Doctorate from the University of the Western Cape. In July 2020 he was elected the Chairperson of the Commonwealth of Learning Board. In November 2020, he was appointed to the Governing Council of the Magna Charta Observatory. During 2021 he was engaged as a research associate at the University of Johannesburg.

Dr Daniela Gachago is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Innovation in Learning at Teaching at the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on academic staff development to transform teaching and learning in higher education, with a particular focus on socially just pedagogies such as digital storytelling. She is also interested in innovative course and curriculum design drawing from co-creative approaches such as design thinking. She received a PHD from the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is the managing editor of CriSTaL, the journal for critical studies in teaching and learning in higher education.

Shironica P. Karunanayaka is a Senior Professor in Educational Technology at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). She is a former Dean of the Faculty of Education, OUSL. Prof. Karunanayaka has been an academic at OUSL since 1993. She holds a first class in the Degree of Bachelor of Science from the OUSL, and the Degree of Doctor of Education from the University of Wollongong, Australia, specializing in Information Technology in Education and Training. Being an active researcher, Prof. Karunanayaka has published widely. Her key research areas include ICT in education, learning experience design, Open Educational Resources and Open Educational Practices.

Dr. Adebayo is the Academic Manager at the STADIO School of Education on the Centurion mega campus and lecturer for the Postgraduate Certificate Education (PGCE) programme for Teaching Agricultural Science in the Further Education and Training (FET). He is the former Head of Academics and has over 20 years lecturing experience including work at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of South Africa. Dr. Adebayo’s research focuses on Inclusive and alternative Assessment, Critical pedagogy, and University-Community Engagement, including a peer-reviewed journal article with Dr. Ronicka Mudaly entitled ‘Creating a Decolonised Curriculum to Address Food Insecurity among University Students’.

Fiona Anderson has been in the education sector since 2003. She has gained knowledge and experience in the field of adult education, vocational education, inclusive education, open, distance and eLearning as well as educational technology. She is a young researcher with research interests predominantly in the field of educational technology and open, distance and eLearning. She possesses qualifications in the field of secondary education, vocational education, training and development and instructional design. In addition, she also possesses a Master in Education (Open, Distance and eLearning) which she has obtained from UNISA, amongst others. She is currently employed as a Learning Designer at the University of Namibia (UNAM). In her free time she pursues hobbies such as reading and travelling amongst others.

Arlene Archer is an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics and is the director of the Writing Centre at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research interests include multimodal pedagogies, social semiotics, and academic literacies. She is editor of Multimodality and Society and is currently investigating changing forms of writing in a digital age with a British Academy Fellowship.

Rehema Baguma is a Senior Lecturer & Researcher at the School of Computing & Informatics Technology, Makerere University, Uganda. Her Research interests include: Digital Inclusion, Human Centered design and accessibility of computing systems and services to persons with disabilities, Education Technology/eLearning and E-Governance. Previously, she also served as the Head Department of Information at Makerere University and a Research Fellow at United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV). She holds a PhD in Information Systems from Radboud University, Netherlands, a PGD in Education Technology from University of Cape Town, a Masters in Computer Application Technology from Huazhong University of Sc &Tech, China and a PG Certificate in Monitoring and Evaluation from Saarland University, German.

Dr Maha Bali is an Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning & Teaching at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She also teaches digital literacies and intercultural learning. She is a co-founder of virtuallyconnecting.org (a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences) and co-facilitator of Equity Unbound (an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum, which has also branched into academic community activities Continuity with Care and Inclusive Academia). She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield in the UK. She tweets a lot @bali_maha and blogs at blog.mahabali.me

Stephanie is a UCT-graduate who has been working in the e-learning industry since 2015. She’s the co-founder of Who’s your ADDIE?, a digital marketplace for instructional designers, and is currently working as a freelance learning experience designer in the corporate and NGO context. With a particular interest in creating more engaging and user-friendly interactive learning material, she earned her MsC in Interaction Design in 2020 from the Cyprus University of Technology in partnership with Tallinn University where she now teaches a master’s course in prototyping.

Over the past 30 years, Sue Bennett has worked as a writer, educational designer, higher education teacher and university academic. Her work investigates how people engage with technology in their everyday lives and in educational settings. Her aim is to develop a more holistic understanding of people's technology practices to inform research, practice and policy. She has been researching design thinking and learning design since 1999. She is currently a professor of education at the University of Wollongong.

Lucila Carvalho is a senior lecturer in e-learning & digital technologies at the Institute of Education, and co-director of the Equity Through Education Research Centre, Massey University (Auckland, New Zealand). Lucila’s research explores how knowledge and social structures shape the design and use of technology, and how technology influences social and educational experiences. Lucila’s latest books include Place-Based Spaces for Networked Learning (edited with Peter Goodyear and Maarten de Laat, Routledge 2017) and The Architecture of Productive Learning Networks (edited with Peter Goodyear, Routledge 2014). More information about Lucila’s work can be found on her website

Johannes Cronjé is a professor of Digital Teaching and Learning in the Department of Information Technology at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology . Prior to that he was the Dean Informatics and Design. He has supervised more than 140 Masters' and Doctoral students and published more than 65 peer reviewed papers. He is a sought-after international keynote speaker and has been a visiting professor at seven universities internationally.
Website | Google scholar profile

After receiving the Bachelor’s in Technology (BTech) Degree in Architectural Technology from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2007 and working in industry for a few years, Marga transitioned from architectural practice to academia in 2010. Over the years, Marga has worked at award-winning architectural practices and lectured at various esteemed private design institutions before joining the STADIO School of Architecture and Spatial Design in 2021. Her interests include learning design and alternate learning methods, which she hopes to focus on as she pursues postgraduate studies.

Irwin DeVries is committed to making higher education more accessible using open learning methods. His experience and research interests include distance education, instructional design and open educational practices. He has worked in professional and higher education settings, in both practice and leadership roles. Most recently Irwin was Director, Curriculum Development and interim Associate Vice President, Open Learning at Thompson Rivers University. He is currently Associate Faculty with Royal Roads University and Adjunct Faculty with the School of Education at Thompson Rivers University. Irwin has a PhD in Education from Simon Fraser University.

Helen DeWaard works with the Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, Orillia, and is a learning designer with the University of British Columbia Faculty of Education. She holds a Masters of Educational Technology from the University of British Columbia, a Masters of Education from the University of Toronto, OISE, and is a PhD candidate. She can be found at hjdewaard.ca. Helen actively tweets about education related topics ( @hj_dewaard) and blogs at Five Flames for Learning Attribution for the image is CC BY Sebastiaan Ter Burg

Dr. Eliana Elkhoury is an assistant professor at Athabasca University. She has extensive experience in teaching and learning in K12 and higher education settings within both Canada and internationally. Her work focuses on education in emergencies and innovation in teaching and learning. Eliana’s latest work includes training teachers in alternative ways of doing assessments. Dr. Elkhoury has received multiple grants to conduct research, and has published and presented on STEM education, equity in education, and alternative assessments. Her current research interests include: Innovation in teaching and learning, alternative assessment in multiple disciplines, open education and equity in assessment practices.

Nelisa Freitas works as a health practitioner and assistant planner in the home care services for the City of Mölndal, Gothenburg, Sweden. Prior to that she was a lecturer quantitative techniques, finance and accounting at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She has investment and retail banking, forensic accounting and business administration experience gained in South Africa and abroad.

Dr Daniela Gachago is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Innovation in Learning at Teaching at the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on academic staff development to transform teaching and learning in higher education, with a particular focus on socially just pedagogies such as digital storytelling. She is also interested in innovative course and curriculum design drawing from co-creative approaches such as design thinking. She received a PHD from the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is the managing editor of CriSTaL, the journal for critical studies in teaching and learning in higher education.

Clare Gormley is an academic developer with DCU Teaching Enhancement Unit who has worked in digital education since 1996. She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA) and a Fellow of the Staff and Educational Development Association (FSEDA). Clare has an MSc in Applied eLearning and has worked with faculty from multiple disciplines to collaboratively design online and blended learning experiences. An advocate of ABC Learning Design, she co-led the influential Erasmus+ ABC to VLE project at DCU. She has also published in a range of peer-reviewed journals on professional learning in higher education and is currently undertaking an EdD in Digital Learning.

Jennifer K. Green is a senior lecturer in the School of Nursing, Massey University (Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand). Her PhD research is focusing on productive hybrid learning environments in times of transition. She is a registered nurse with 40 years in clinical and education environments. Her background includes perioperative nursing, and hybrid learning course development with a focus on team-based learning; cooperative inquiry; interprofessional learning; simulation; and clinical teaching. She is a fellow of the higher education academy and an award-winning educator with extensive tertiary and clinical teaching experience.

No NgāPuhi me Ngātiporou oku karanga
Kō Takota Paulè Ruwhiu taku ingoa
Tiheiwā mauri ora

Sandhya is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Innovative and Lifelong Learning - University of Mauritius. She is the online tutor and content developper for the BSc and MSc Educational Technology Programmes, specially related to Open educational resources. She is also coordinating the MA Educational Leadership programme in collaboration with the University of Seychelles and has reviewed and adapted the COL OER content for the SIDS contexts. She has conducted many workshops with COL, UNESCO, COMESA and the SADC on numerous e-learning and digital literacy projects and is currently pursuing her PhD studies in the field of Horizontal Collaborative Networks and development of T-Shaped graduates.

Dr. Michelle Harrison is a Senior Instructional Designer and Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University—Open Learning and is the past Chair of the Learning Design and Innovation department. Her research interests lie in learning design, open educational practices, and designing learning spaces with emerging educational technologies. She has a PhD in e-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning from Lancaster University in the UK, where she focused on exploring how we perceive and use space in networked learning environments.

Leo is a digital and open education specialist and researcher, a Digital Education Advisor at University College London, and a doctoral researcher at the Open University (UK)

Nazira is a lecturer and educational developer within the curriculum and teaching team at the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development (CLTD) at Wits. She facilitated previously on policy and governance at the Wits School of Governance (WSG) and consulted in government and taught widely in Finance and Business Management in South Africa and in the Middle East. She holds a Master’s degree from Wits University. Her PhD is within the broader field of the interdisciplinary digital knowledge economy with a particular focus on the critical digital pedagogic practice of academics. Her research focuses on academic identity, agency, continuous professional learning (CPL) and policy in higher education. She currently lectures and co-supervises on the Masters in Design and Development of Online Learning course at the WsoE among other programmes at the CLTD.

Chelsea obtained the National Diploma in Architectural Technology from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2019 and joined the academic team at the STADIO School of Architecture and Spatial Design the following year. She has a keen interest in design and sustainability, regenerative futures, anthropology, and environmentalism. Ms Horn is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Management through the University of South Africa. Chelsea considers herself a creative - deeply invested in understanding and designing for people and places.

Christine Immenga is the Senior Coordinator of Student Governance within the Department of Student Affairs at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has been working in Student Affairs for the last ten years and holds a Bachelor of Social Science (Law, Politics & Classics) as well as an Honours in Classical Studies from the University of Cape Town. Her current pursuits include co-lecturing on the Online Learning Design course which forms part of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education Technologies as well as pursuing a master’s degree in Higher Education Studies with a research focus on participatory curriculum

Shironica P. Karunanayaka is a Senior Professor in Educational Technology at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). She is a former Dean of the Faculty of Education, OUSL. Prof. Karunanayaka has been an academic at OUSL since 1993. She holds a first class in the Degree of Bachelor of Science from the OUSL, and the Degree of Doctor of Education from the University of Wollongong, Australia, specializing in Information Technology in Education and Training. Being an active researcher, Prof. Karunanayaka has published widely. Her key research areas include ICT in education, learning experience design, Open Educational Resources and Open Educational Practices.

Japhet Hindundu Kazavanga is a teacher by profession with over ten (10) years of teaching experience. After his teaching career he joined a distance teaching college where he was responsible for materials development in that college for ten (10) years. He thereafter joined the University of Namibia as a materials developer, now called learning designer, where he spent more than seventeen (17) years. His interests are to explore the ways students learn and our roles as learning designers in the learning of distance students.

Whitney Kilgore, Ph.D. is co-founder and chief academic officer of iDesign, a partner to universities who wish to build, grow, and support online and blended course and program offerings. iDesign provides concierge, white-glove instructional design support to faculty partners. Their designers bring expertise, service, and project structure to bear and ensuring that faculty feel comfortable, informed, and in control throughout the process of creating online learning experiences for their students. Dr. Kilgore has led the development of programs across the U.S., Spain, the Philippines, China, Australia, Latin America, and the U.K. She is currently working on research related to care theory in online learning and the impact to practice of humanizing online teaching and learning. She edited and published the book Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning and Connecting the Dots: Book: Improving Student Outcomes with Exceptional Instructional Design.

Greig Krull is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Director for Digital Learning in the Commerce, Law and Management Faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He holds a PhD in Technology-Enhanced Learning from the Open University of Catalonia (Spain) and an M.Com from Rhodes University. His research interests lie in open and flexible learning in higher education, particularly around effectively using technologies to promote quality teaching and learning and academic professional learning. He is a member of the National Association of Distance Education and Open Learning in South Africa executive committee and the International Advisory Board for the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.

Rob Lowney is a Learning Technologist in the DCU Teaching Enhancement Unit with over 15 years experience in a variety of higher education roles. He is a Senior Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology. He is passionate about student voice and partnership and leads the Students as Partners in Assessment project at DCU. Rob has been an enthusiastic user of ABC Learning Design for several years, because of its collaborative ethos, and has facilitated workshops in a variety of formats and settings. He holds a BA and MA from University College Dublin and an MSc in Applied eLearning from Dublin Institute of Technology. He is currently undertaking an EdD in Digital Learning.

Caroline Magunje is an educational technologist with 9 years’ experience as a staff developer and instructional designer in Zimbabwe higher education. Caroline holds a Master’s in Education in ICTS from the University of Cape Town, South Africa and is currently studying towards a PhD in Educational Technologies at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa.

Anneri Meintjes is a researcher in the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of the Free State. She has worked in different roles in higher education since 2012, with a broad focus on blended learning and educational technology but a particular interest in the use of online assessment in the South African higher education context. She is also involved in (and passionate about) academic development in good blended and online learning practice, as well as curriculum design.

Dr Serpil Meri-Yilan is an assistant professor of languages at Agri Ibrahim Cecen University, Turkey. She holds her MA and PhD in Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching from the University of Southampton. She is also a research collaborator of ImmerseMe and a country director of Turkey to the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association. She presents, writes and make reviews on foreign language education. Her research interests and areas of expertise also include e-learning, learner autonomy, motivation, digital storytelling, humanization, and social inclusion and justice.

Kate Molloy is a Learning Technologist with the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at NUI Galway and is currently the NUI Galway lead on the Irish Universities Association Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning project. Prior to taking up this role at NUI Galway, Kate had been a secondary English teacher in both the United States and Ireland for over a decade. As a teacher, she became interested in critical pedagogy, inclusivity, and the use of technology. In 2015, she moved into higher education where she supports staff teaching with technology. Her work focuses on the informed and ethical use of technology in higher education, learning design, and open practice. Kate is Secretary, National Executive of the Computers in Education Society of Ireland (CESI), and was a Digital Pedagogy Lab Fellow in 2019.

Dr Moodley is in the field of educational technology. Her research focuses on blended learning, e-learning, online learning and various different educational technology. She publishes in field of social change, science education and technology education. She works in the unit for Comprehensive Online Education Services as a learning designer and is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education.

Dr. Tannis Morgan is AVP, Academic Innovation at Vancouver Community College. For the past two years she worked as an Advisor, Learning and Teaching, and Researcher, Open Education Practices at BCcampus. Her research is at the intersection of distance education, educational technology, and open education, and is currently focused on impact and OEP, and social justice frameworks for measuring impact. Tannis is one of the founding members of the OpenETC , a community of educators, technologists, and designers sharing their expertise to foster and support open ed tech infrastructure for the BC post-secondary sector.

Jolanda Morkel is the Head: Instructional Design at STADIO Higher Education since January 2021. During her former 20-year academic career at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), she designed, coordinated, and facilitated various transformative learning and teaching interventions employing innovative learning technologies. These blended and flexible student-centered learning interventions were designed to serve culturally diverse, non-traditional, and working students to promote access, diversity, and inclusion at the University. Her current research focuses on learning experience design, studio-based education, and design thinking for higher education. Jolanda Morkel is a Professional licenced Architect.

Travis’ research focuses on original online content creation and how authors’ digital voices reflect structural enablers and constraints. He has explored teenage visual artists development of e-portfolios for connected learning and journalism students’ designs of data infographics. He currently researches insulin resistance health experts’ use of digital platforms for promoting an emergent scientific paradigm.

Oluwaseun Oyekola is an Associate Professor in the department of Chemical Engineering, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa, where he also serves as the postgraduate studies coordinator. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He links teaching and learning with research and scholarship, with emphasis on national relevance and global excellence. His scientific research interests include resource recovery from waste materials, renewable energy and bioremediation of wastewater. His research in teaching and learning addresses the issue of social justice. He has over 90 publications in peer-reviewed academic journals, conference proceedings and other knowledge hubs.

Dr Nicola Palitt coordinates the efforts of the Educational Technology team in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) at Rhodes University and offers professional development opportunities for academics to use technologies effectively in their roles as educators and researchers. Nicola provides learning design support and consultation in relation to teaching with technology (technology integration) and blended and online teaching and learning. She also supports lecturers to design appropriate technology-mediated learning experiences for their students. Nicola supervises postgraduate students and co-teaches formal courses in Higher Education. She enjoys meeting EdTech practitioners and researchers from across the globe and is part of the e/merge Africa team. Read more about Nicola on her university’s staff page or follow her on Twitter at nicolapallitt .

Dr. Michael Paskevicius is Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on learning design practices, the development of digital literacies, and supporting personal knowledge management in an environment of rapid technological change. Michael has worked in higher education institutions across Southern Africa and Western Canada since 2005, supporting collaborative, creative, and personalized approaches to learning. As an advocate for openness in education, his research explores the integration of open source tools, open educational resources, and the development of open educational practices among educators.

Patrice is Associate Director of Learning Design, Technology and Media within the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Through her research she looks to develop course and systems level structures that support diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and justice. She is passionate about increasing global access to STEM education for women. She believes that by increasing access to education for women we can enable more communities across the globe to thrive and flourish. Patrice holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering (B.S.), and Business Management (MBA) from Union College, and Curriculum and Instruction (Ph.D.) from University at Albany.

Rubina D Rampersad is a trained educational technologist at the University of Mauritius, with more than 25 years of experience. She supports content experts to design modules on distance, online and blended learning modes. She also works with the industry to mount programmes that are customised to the needs of the employers in terms of mode of delivery and assessment. She has designed MOOCs targeting an international audience with more than 10,000 students. She holds an MA in Distance Education and an MSc in Educational Technologies.

Mashudu is an Online Learning Designer on the CILT Course and Curriculum Development team. She received her Post Graduate Diploma specialising in Education Technology with the University of Cape Town and has held various teaching positions at previous educational institutions prior to joining CILT. Mashudu is currently invested in a Masters of Education with a focus on the shifting roles and identities of academic staff in the blended and online teaching and learning spaces. She believes in lifelong learning and fostering 21st century skills through learning experiences.

David Redelinghuys is a game developer with a special interest in developing educational games. David also spent the last two years as a part-time lecturer in the Faculty of Business & Management Sciences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) where he gained first had exposure and experience of the online learning environment within a higher education setting. David holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB) as well as qualifications in Project and Programme Management from Cranefiled College.

Dr. Verena Roberts is an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary and an Instructional Designer with Thompson Rivers University, Open Learning. Her research interests include learning design, open learning, open educational resources (OER) and pedagogy (OEP), participatory learning and the ethics of educational technology.

Over 10 years of experience leading e-learning and blended learning projects in different types of higher education programs and government entities as well as training for public officials and to promote behavioral changes in the community. I have trained teachers and subject matter experts to achieve educational innovation, learning design and the pedagogical use of ICT. I am a volunteer at Solacyt, a non-profit organization which is a member of an international network that works on the promotion, dissemination, and scientific literacy, especially among the school population. Also, I have written some papers in the field of education.

Paulè A. Ruwhiu is a lecturer based at Massey University, in the College of Health, School of Social Work at the Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand, however, also teaches on Palmerston North campus. Her social work background includes Māori mental health and tertiary teaching both in a polytechnic and university settings. Paulè has specific interests in decolonisation, transmission of te ao Māori knowledge and intergenerational patterns for Māori. Her PhD was on the process of decolonisation and the experiences of Māori social workers and Māori social work students. Paulè has published in various social workbooks and journal articles as a sole author and co-author. The topics have been around mana-enhancing practice, Māori Mental Health and the Rise in Iwi Social Services. Paulè was involved in the working group for Social Work Registration Board (SWRB) to discuss the Scope of Practice for social work. Paulè’s future ambitions and goals are to keep publishing as a contributor to Māori Scholarly literature and to offer decolonisation programmes throughout Aotearoa New Zealand for professionals.

Nicolette F. Sheridan, PhD. Professor and Head of the School of Nursing, Massey University, New Zealand. She is a registered nurse with 30 years in clinical practice, research and education. She was the first Associate Dean Equity in the health faculty, University of Auckland. She is leading a $1.3 million study investigating primary care patient outcomes, especially for Māori and Pacific peoples, with researchers from Cambridge University (UK) and Karolinska Institute (Sweden). She has led or been co-investigator in 36-studies; chaired expert advisory groups and was the government industry monitor of a wānanga-based Māori nursing programme. She is of Ngāpuhi descent.

Widad is an Online Learning Designer at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) that is based at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Prior to working in online course and curriculum development, Widad has worked as a project research assistant, teacher and university tutor. She holds a Master’s Degree in Education in which she has researched how social cohesion is incorporated into an initial teacher training (B.Ed) programme in South Africa. Most recently, she received her Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education Studies and will be pursing her PhD in which she would like to focus on inclusive and equitable learning design in the higher education context.

Janet manages the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) learning design unit. She has an Adult Education MPhil and has worked in educational design for 15 years. She is passionate about widening access and creating effective opportunities for learning. She leads the Redesigning Blended Courses Project (2021-2023) which integrates the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into models of blended learning. With other CILT colleagues, she ran the UCT MOOCs project which created 23 Massive Open Online Courses between 2015- 2019, and has been part of collaborative research on MOOC-takers living in Africa.

Proscovia Namubiru Ssentamu is an associate professor of education and head of the quality assurance department at Uganda Management Institute (UMI). She facilitates education-related Masters and PhD programmes and supervises graduate research. She is an external examiner on PhD programmes and a member of three Editorial Advisory Boards within and beyond Uganda. She has a Doctorate of Philosophy of Education (University of Bayreuth, Germany), MA in Curriculum Studies (London), MEd in Curriculum Studies (Makerere), PGDip in Human Resource Management (UMI), PGDip in Education Technology (Cape Town); Graduate Certificate in Quality Assurance (Melbourne), and BA/ED - Literature in English, English Language, Education (Makerere). Proscovia is a scholar, practitioner, trainer, researcher and consultant in quality assurance in education; curriculum design, development and evaluation; pedagogy and andragogy; educational research, monitoring and evaluation; and teacher professional development, and has published in these areas.

Lizzy has been working in the e-learning industry in various positions since 2011, and is fortunate to have served across all the sectors of the space, from NGO and corporate contexts, to secondary and higher education, both locally and internationally. She is the Co-founder of Who’s your ADDIE?, which is a marketplace where e-learning professionals can buy and sell e-learning resources and templates. She earned her PhD in English Literature at UWC in 2018, and is always looking for new ways to leverage the power of storytelling in her e-learning creations.

Suzanne works as a Learning Technologist at Dublin City University (DCU) supporting staff to integrate digital technologies in their teaching and learning. A Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA), Suzanne holds an MSc in Education (eLearning) and is currently in year four of a Doctorate of Education programme. Suzanne has used the ABC learning design process for a number of years, and has expertise in both face-to-face and online delivery modes. Suzanne has published research across a range of topics including: digital learning; large cohort teaching; and inclusive education.

Clare Thomson is a Digital Education Consultant in the Office for Digital Learning at Ulster University, in Northern Ireland, supporting staff across four geographical campuses. Clare has worked in higher education for over sixteen years and within the field of education technology for over twenty years. She is studying part time for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Her interests focus on inclusion, digital accessibility, creativity and care - there are too few opportunities for shared laughter in the academy. She is co-chair of the Association of Learning Technology Northern Ireland members groups, a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SHEA) and a Certified Member of the Association of Learning Technology.

Dr Nompilo Tshuma is a lecturer and researcher in the Centre for Higher and Adult Education at Stellenbosch University. She has been working with educational technology since 2005, as both a lecturer and an academic developer. In her current role she is the institutional coordinator for a regional PG Diploma in Higher Education. She also teaches modules in the Centre's two MPhil programmes and supervises Masters and PhD students. As a critical educational technology researcher, she employs social and critical theories to explore the context and politics of higher education, and their impact on educational technology practices.

Dr Mari van Wyk has a PhD in Computer Integrated Education and is a senior learning designer at the department of Comprehensive Online Education Services at the University of Pretoria. She is responsible for instructional design, research and curriculum development. Mari is an alumnus of the University of Stellenbosch, Tshwane University of Technology and University of Pretoria. Her area of expertise is blended learning, mobile learning, e-Learning and teaching with technology. She has presented both locally and internationally as well as published in both local and international journals on the topics of Blended learning, student experience / student voice, student use of videos and online learning design and student experiences in online modules.

Nokuthula is currently undertaking full-time PhD study in Education, in the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, researching academic staff development for blended learning approaches to curriculum design and pedagogy. She is also part of the UCT Project Team on Redesigning blended courses through Universal Design for Learning. Nokuthula is on study leave from the University of Eswatini, Institute for Distance Education, serving in an Instructional Design and Development portfolio. She contributed to the Southern African Teaching and Learning Forum (SAULT) research project on rurality and technology in higher education. Further, she co-created a Commonwealth of Learning course on Quality Assurance for Blended Learning.

Mia Zamora, Ph. D. is Associate Professor of English and Director of the MA in Writing Studies at Kean University in Union, NJ, USA. A recent recipient of Kean University’s “Professor of the Year” Award, she is a scholar of Electronic Literature and a #connectedlearning advocate. Zamora's commitment to equity, digital literacies, data rights, and intercultural understanding is clear in both her public scholarship and leadership work. As a leading voice for the practice of open networked education, she has founded several global learning networks including Equity Unbound (#unboundeq) and Networked Narratives (#netnarr).
MiaZamoraPhD.com

Prof Narend Baijnath is former CEO of the Council on Higher Education in South Africa. Before joining the CHE, he was Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of South Africa, where he also previously occupied the position of Vice Principal in two portfolios. Narend holds a Master’s degree from Durham University, and a Doctorate from the University of the Western Cape. In July 2020 he was elected the Chairperson of the Commonwealth of Learning Board. In November 2020, he was appointed to the Governing Council of the Magna Charta Observatory. During 2021 he was engaged as a research associate at the University of Johannesburg.

Over the past 30 years, Sue Bennett has worked as a writer, educational designer, higher education teacher and university academic. Her work investigates how people engage with technology in their everyday lives and in educational settings. Her aim is to develop a more holistic understanding of people's technology practices to inform research, practice and policy. She has been researching design thinking and learning design since 1999. She is currently a professor of education at the University of Wollongong.

Dr Daniela Gachago is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Innovation in Learning at Teaching at the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on academic staff development to transform teaching and learning in higher education, with a particular focus on socially just pedagogies such as digital storytelling. She is also interested in innovative course and curriculum design drawing from co-creative approaches such as design thinking. She received a PHD from the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is the managing editor of CriSTaL, the journal for critical studies in teaching and learning in higher education.

Dr. Adebayo is the Academic Manager at the STADIO School of Education on the Centurion mega campus and lecturer for the Postgraduate Certificate Education (PGCE) programme for Teaching Agricultural Science in the Further Education and Training (FET). He is the former Head of Academics and has over 20 years lecturing experience including work at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of South Africa. Dr. Adebayo’s research focuses on Inclusive and alternative Assessment, Critical pedagogy, and University-Community Engagement, including a peer-reviewed journal article with Dr. Ronicka Mudaly entitled ‘Creating a Decolonised Curriculum to Address Food Insecurity among University Students’.

Fiona Anderson has been in the education sector since 2003. She has gained knowledge and experience in the field of adult education, vocational education, inclusive education, open, distance and eLearning as well as educational technology. She is a young researcher with research interests predominantly in the field of educational technology and open, distance and eLearning. She possesses qualifications in the field of secondary education, vocational education, training and development and instructional design. In addition, she also possesses a Master in Education (Open, Distance and eLearning) which she has obtained from UNISA, amongst others. She is currently employed as a Learning Designer at the University of Namibia (UNAM). In her free time she pursues hobbies such as reading and travelling amongst others.

Arlene Archer is an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics and is the director of the Writing Centre at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research interests include multimodal pedagogies, social semiotics, and academic literacies. She is editor of Multimodality and Society and is currently investigating changing forms of writing in a digital age with a British Academy Fellowship.

Rehema Baguma is a Senior Lecturer & Researcher at the School of Computing & Informatics Technology, Makerere University, Uganda. Her Research interests include: Digital Inclusion, Human Centered design and accessibility of computing systems and services to persons with disabilities, Education Technology/eLearning and E-Governance. Previously, she also served as the Head Department of Information at Makerere University and a Research Fellow at United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV). She holds a PhD in Information Systems from Radboud University, Netherlands, a PGD in Education Technology from University of Cape Town, a Masters in Computer Application Technology from Huazhong University of Sc &Tech, China and a PG Certificate in Monitoring and Evaluation from Saarland University, German.

Dr Maha Bali is an Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning & Teaching at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She also teaches digital literacies and intercultural learning. She is a co-founder of virtuallyconnecting.org (a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences) and co-facilitator of Equity Unbound (an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum, which has also branched into academic community activities Continuity with Care and Inclusive Academia). She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield in the UK. She tweets a lot @bali_maha and blogs at blog.mahabali.me

Stephanie is a UCT-graduate who has been working in the e-learning industry since 2015. She’s the co-founder of Who’s your ADDIE?, a digital marketplace for instructional designers, and is currently working as a freelance learning experience designer in the corporate and NGO context. With a particular interest in creating more engaging and user-friendly interactive learning material, she earned her MsC in Interaction Design in 2020 from the Cyprus University of Technology in partnership with Tallinn University where she now teaches a master’s course in prototyping.

Over the past 30 years, Sue Bennett has worked as a writer, educational designer, higher education teacher and university academic. Her work investigates how people engage with technology in their everyday lives and in educational settings. Her aim is to develop a more holistic understanding of people's technology practices to inform research, practice and policy. She has been researching design thinking and learning design since 1999. She is currently a professor of education at the University of Wollongong.

Lucila Carvalho is a senior lecturer in e-learning & digital technologies at the Institute of Education, and co-director of the Equity Through Education Research Centre, Massey University (Auckland, New Zealand). Lucila’s research explores how knowledge and social structures shape the design and use of technology, and how technology influences social and educational experiences. Lucila’s latest books include Place-Based Spaces for Networked Learning (edited with Peter Goodyear and Maarten de Laat, Routledge 2017) and The Architecture of Productive Learning Networks (edited with Peter Goodyear, Routledge 2014). More information about Lucila’s work can be found on her website

Johannes Cronjé is a professor of Digital Teaching and Learning in the Department of Information Technology at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology . Prior to that he was the Dean Informatics and Design. He has supervised more than 140 Masters' and Doctoral students and published more than 65 peer reviewed papers. He is a sought-after international keynote speaker and has been a visiting professor at seven universities internationally.
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After receiving the Bachelor’s in Technology (BTech) Degree in Architectural Technology from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2007 and working in industry for a few years, Marga transitioned from architectural practice to academia in 2010. Over the years, Marga has worked at award-winning architectural practices and lectured at various esteemed private design institutions before joining the STADIO School of Architecture and Spatial Design in 2021. Her interests include learning design and alternate learning methods, which she hopes to focus on as she pursues postgraduate studies.

Irwin DeVries is committed to making higher education more accessible using open learning methods. His experience and research interests include distance education, instructional design and open educational practices. He has worked in professional and higher education settings, in both practice and leadership roles. Most recently Irwin was Director, Curriculum Development and interim Associate Vice President, Open Learning at Thompson Rivers University. He is currently Associate Faculty with Royal Roads University and Adjunct Faculty with the School of Education at Thompson Rivers University. Irwin has a PhD in Education from Simon Fraser University.

Helen DeWaard works with the Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, Orillia, and is a learning designer with the University of British Columbia Faculty of Education. She holds a Masters of Educational Technology from the University of British Columbia, a Masters of Education from the University of Toronto, OISE, and is a PhD candidate. She can be found at hjdewaard.ca. Helen actively tweets about education related topics ( @hj_dewaard) and blogs at Five Flames for Learning Attribution for the image is CC BY Sebastiaan Ter Burg

Dr. Eliana Elkhoury is an assistant professor at Athabasca University. She has extensive experience in teaching and learning in K12 and higher education settings within both Canada and internationally. Her work focuses on education in emergencies and innovation in teaching and learning. Eliana’s latest work includes training teachers in alternative ways of doing assessments. Dr. Elkhoury has received multiple grants to conduct research, and has published and presented on STEM education, equity in education, and alternative assessments. Her current research interests include: Innovation in teaching and learning, alternative assessment in multiple disciplines, open education and equity in assessment practices.

Nelisa Freitas works as a health practitioner and assistant planner in the home care services for the City of Mölndal, Gothenburg, Sweden. Prior to that she was a lecturer quantitative techniques, finance and accounting at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She has investment and retail banking, forensic accounting and business administration experience gained in South Africa and abroad.

Dr Daniela Gachago is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Innovation in Learning at Teaching at the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on academic staff development to transform teaching and learning in higher education, with a particular focus on socially just pedagogies such as digital storytelling. She is also interested in innovative course and curriculum design drawing from co-creative approaches such as design thinking. She received a PHD from the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is the managing editor of CriSTaL, the journal for critical studies in teaching and learning in higher education.

Clare Gormley is an academic developer with DCU Teaching Enhancement Unit who has worked in digital education since 1996. She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA) and a Fellow of the Staff and Educational Development Association (FSEDA). Clare has an MSc in Applied eLearning and has worked with faculty from multiple disciplines to collaboratively design online and blended learning experiences. An advocate of ABC Learning Design, she co-led the influential Erasmus+ ABC to VLE project at DCU. She has also published in a range of peer-reviewed journals on professional learning in higher education and is currently undertaking an EdD in Digital Learning.

Jennifer K. Green is a senior lecturer in the School of Nursing, Massey University (Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand). Her PhD research is focusing on productive hybrid learning environments in times of transition. She is a registered nurse with 40 years in clinical and education environments. Her background includes perioperative nursing, and hybrid learning course development with a focus on team-based learning; cooperative inquiry; interprofessional learning; simulation; and clinical teaching. She is a fellow of the higher education academy and an award-winning educator with extensive tertiary and clinical teaching experience.

No NgāPuhi me Ngātiporou oku karanga
Kō Takota Paulè Ruwhiu taku ingoa
Tiheiwā mauri ora

Sandhya is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Innovative and Lifelong Learning - University of Mauritius. She is the online tutor and content developper for the BSc and MSc Educational Technology Programmes, specially related to Open educational resources. She is also coordinating the MA Educational Leadership programme in collaboration with the University of Seychelles and has reviewed and adapted the COL OER content for the SIDS contexts. She has conducted many workshops with COL, UNESCO, COMESA and the SADC on numerous e-learning and digital literacy projects and is currently pursuing her PhD studies in the field of Horizontal Collaborative Networks and development of T-Shaped graduates.

Dr. Michelle Harrison is a Senior Instructional Designer and Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University—Open Learning and is the past Chair of the Learning Design and Innovation department. Her research interests lie in learning design, open educational practices, and designing learning spaces with emerging educational technologies. She has a PhD in e-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning from Lancaster University in the UK, where she focused on exploring how we perceive and use space in networked learning environments.

Leo is a digital and open education specialist and researcher, a Digital Education Advisor at University College London, and a doctoral researcher at the Open University (UK)

Nazira is a lecturer and educational developer within the curriculum and teaching team at the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development (CLTD) at Wits. She facilitated previously on policy and governance at the Wits School of Governance (WSG) and consulted in government and taught widely in Finance and Business Management in South Africa and in the Middle East. She holds a Master’s degree from Wits University. Her PhD is within the broader field of the interdisciplinary digital knowledge economy with a particular focus on the critical digital pedagogic practice of academics. Her research focuses on academic identity, agency, continuous professional learning (CPL) and policy in higher education. She currently lectures and co-supervises on the Masters in Design and Development of Online Learning course at the WsoE among other programmes at the CLTD.

Chelsea obtained the National Diploma in Architectural Technology from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2019 and joined the academic team at the STADIO School of Architecture and Spatial Design the following year. She has a keen interest in design and sustainability, regenerative futures, anthropology, and environmentalism. Ms Horn is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Management through the University of South Africa. Chelsea considers herself a creative - deeply invested in understanding and designing for people and places.

Christine Immenga is the Senior Coordinator of Student Governance within the Department of Student Affairs at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has been working in Student Affairs for the last ten years and holds a Bachelor of Social Science (Law, Politics & Classics) as well as an Honours in Classical Studies from the University of Cape Town. Her current pursuits include co-lecturing on the Online Learning Design course which forms part of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education Technologies as well as pursuing a master’s degree in Higher Education Studies with a research focus on participatory curriculum

Shironica P. Karunanayaka is a Senior Professor in Educational Technology at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). She is a former Dean of the Faculty of Education, OUSL. Prof. Karunanayaka has been an academic at OUSL since 1993. She holds a first class in the Degree of Bachelor of Science from the OUSL, and the Degree of Doctor of Education from the University of Wollongong, Australia, specializing in Information Technology in Education and Training. Being an active researcher, Prof. Karunanayaka has published widely. Her key research areas include ICT in education, learning experience design, Open Educational Resources and Open Educational Practices.

Japhet Hindundu Kazavanga is a teacher by profession with over ten (10) years of teaching experience. After his teaching career he joined a distance teaching college where he was responsible for materials development in that college for ten (10) years. He thereafter joined the University of Namibia as a materials developer, now called learning designer, where he spent more than seventeen (17) years. His interests are to explore the ways students learn and our roles as learning designers in the learning of distance students.

Whitney Kilgore, Ph.D. is co-founder and chief academic officer of iDesign, a partner to universities who wish to build, grow, and support online and blended course and program offerings. iDesign provides concierge, white-glove instructional design support to faculty partners. Their designers bring expertise, service, and project structure to bear and ensuring that faculty feel comfortable, informed, and in control throughout the process of creating online learning experiences for their students. Dr. Kilgore has led the development of programs across the U.S., Spain, the Philippines, China, Australia, Latin America, and the U.K. She is currently working on research related to care theory in online learning and the impact to practice of humanizing online teaching and learning. She edited and published the book Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning and Connecting the Dots: Book: Improving Student Outcomes with Exceptional Instructional Design.

Greig Krull is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Director for Digital Learning in the Commerce, Law and Management Faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He holds a PhD in Technology-Enhanced Learning from the Open University of Catalonia (Spain) and an M.Com from Rhodes University. His research interests lie in open and flexible learning in higher education, particularly around effectively using technologies to promote quality teaching and learning and academic professional learning. He is a member of the National Association of Distance Education and Open Learning in South Africa executive committee and the International Advisory Board for the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.

Rob Lowney is a Learning Technologist in the DCU Teaching Enhancement Unit with over 15 years experience in a variety of higher education roles. He is a Senior Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology. He is passionate about student voice and partnership and leads the Students as Partners in Assessment project at DCU. Rob has been an enthusiastic user of ABC Learning Design for several years, because of its collaborative ethos, and has facilitated workshops in a variety of formats and settings. He holds a BA and MA from University College Dublin and an MSc in Applied eLearning from Dublin Institute of Technology. He is currently undertaking an EdD in Digital Learning.

Caroline Magunje is an educational technologist with 9 years’ experience as a staff developer and instructional designer in Zimbabwe higher education. Caroline holds a Master’s in Education in ICTS from the University of Cape Town, South Africa and is currently studying towards a PhD in Educational Technologies at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa.

Anneri Meintjes is a researcher in the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of the Free State. She has worked in different roles in higher education since 2012, with a broad focus on blended learning and educational technology but a particular interest in the use of online assessment in the South African higher education context. She is also involved in (and passionate about) academic development in good blended and online learning practice, as well as curriculum design.

Dr Serpil Meri-Yilan is an assistant professor of languages at Agri Ibrahim Cecen University, Turkey. She holds her MA and PhD in Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching from the University of Southampton. She is also a research collaborator of ImmerseMe and a country director of Turkey to the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association. She presents, writes and make reviews on foreign language education. Her research interests and areas of expertise also include e-learning, learner autonomy, motivation, digital storytelling, humanization, and social inclusion and justice.

Kate Molloy is a Learning Technologist with the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at NUI Galway and is currently the NUI Galway lead on the Irish Universities Association Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning project. Prior to taking up this role at NUI Galway, Kate had been a secondary English teacher in both the United States and Ireland for over a decade. As a teacher, she became interested in critical pedagogy, inclusivity, and the use of technology. In 2015, she moved into higher education where she supports staff teaching with technology. Her work focuses on the informed and ethical use of technology in higher education, learning design, and open practice. Kate is Secretary, National Executive of the Computers in Education Society of Ireland (CESI), and was a Digital Pedagogy Lab Fellow in 2019.

Dr Moodley is in the field of educational technology. Her research focuses on blended learning, e-learning, online learning and various different educational technology. She publishes in field of social change, science education and technology education. She works in the unit for Comprehensive Online Education Services as a learning designer and is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education.

Dr. Tannis Morgan is AVP, Academic Innovation at Vancouver Community College. For the past two years she worked as an Advisor, Learning and Teaching, and Researcher, Open Education Practices at BCcampus. Her research is at the intersection of distance education, educational technology, and open education, and is currently focused on impact and OEP, and social justice frameworks for measuring impact. Tannis is one of the founding members of the OpenETC , a community of educators, technologists, and designers sharing their expertise to foster and support open ed tech infrastructure for the BC post-secondary sector.

Jolanda Morkel is the Head: Instructional Design at STADIO Higher Education since January 2021. During her former 20-year academic career at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), she designed, coordinated, and facilitated various transformative learning and teaching interventions employing innovative learning technologies. These blended and flexible student-centered learning interventions were designed to serve culturally diverse, non-traditional, and working students to promote access, diversity, and inclusion at the University. Her current research focuses on learning experience design, studio-based education, and design thinking for higher education. Jolanda Morkel is a Professional licenced Architect.

Travis’ research focuses on original online content creation and how authors’ digital voices reflect structural enablers and constraints. He has explored teenage visual artists development of e-portfolios for connected learning and journalism students’ designs of data infographics. He currently researches insulin resistance health experts’ use of digital platforms for promoting an emergent scientific paradigm.

Oluwaseun Oyekola is an Associate Professor in the department of Chemical Engineering, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa, where he also serves as the postgraduate studies coordinator. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He links teaching and learning with research and scholarship, with emphasis on national relevance and global excellence. His scientific research interests include resource recovery from waste materials, renewable energy and bioremediation of wastewater. His research in teaching and learning addresses the issue of social justice. He has over 90 publications in peer-reviewed academic journals, conference proceedings and other knowledge hubs.

Dr Nicola Palitt coordinates the efforts of the Educational Technology team in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) at Rhodes University and offers professional development opportunities for academics to use technologies effectively in their roles as educators and researchers. Nicola provides learning design support and consultation in relation to teaching with technology (technology integration) and blended and online teaching and learning. She also supports lecturers to design appropriate technology-mediated learning experiences for their students. Nicola supervises postgraduate students and co-teaches formal courses in Higher Education. She enjoys meeting EdTech practitioners and researchers from across the globe and is part of the e/merge Africa team. Read more about Nicola on her university’s staff page or follow her on Twitter at nicolapallitt .

Dr. Michael Paskevicius is Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on learning design practices, the development of digital literacies, and supporting personal knowledge management in an environment of rapid technological change. Michael has worked in higher education institutions across Southern Africa and Western Canada since 2005, supporting collaborative, creative, and personalized approaches to learning. As an advocate for openness in education, his research explores the integration of open source tools, open educational resources, and the development of open educational practices among educators.

Patrice is Associate Director of Learning Design, Technology and Media within the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Through her research she looks to develop course and systems level structures that support diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and justice. She is passionate about increasing global access to STEM education for women. She believes that by increasing access to education for women we can enable more communities across the globe to thrive and flourish. Patrice holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering (B.S.), and Business Management (MBA) from Union College, and Curriculum and Instruction (Ph.D.) from University at Albany.

Rubina D Rampersad is a trained educational technologist at the University of Mauritius, with more than 25 years of experience. She supports content experts to design modules on distance, online and blended learning modes. She also works with the industry to mount programmes that are customised to the needs of the employers in terms of mode of delivery and assessment. She has designed MOOCs targeting an international audience with more than 10,000 students. She holds an MA in Distance Education and an MSc in Educational Technologies.

Mashudu is an Online Learning Designer on the CILT Course and Curriculum Development team. She received her Post Graduate Diploma specialising in Education Technology with the University of Cape Town and has held various teaching positions at previous educational institutions prior to joining CILT. Mashudu is currently invested in a Masters of Education with a focus on the shifting roles and identities of academic staff in the blended and online teaching and learning spaces. She believes in lifelong learning and fostering 21st century skills through learning experiences.

David Redelinghuys is a game developer with a special interest in developing educational games. David also spent the last two years as a part-time lecturer in the Faculty of Business & Management Sciences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) where he gained first had exposure and experience of the online learning environment within a higher education setting. David holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB) as well as qualifications in Project and Programme Management from Cranefiled College.

Dr. Verena Roberts is an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary and an Instructional Designer with Thompson Rivers University, Open Learning. Her research interests include learning design, open learning, open educational resources (OER) and pedagogy (OEP), participatory learning and the ethics of educational technology.

Over 10 years of experience leading e-learning and blended learning projects in different types of higher education programs and government entities as well as training for public officials and to promote behavioral changes in the community. I have trained teachers and subject matter experts to achieve educational innovation, learning design and the pedagogical use of ICT. I am a volunteer at Solacyt, a non-profit organization which is a member of an international network that works on the promotion, dissemination, and scientific literacy, especially among the school population. Also, I have written some papers in the field of education.

Paulè A. Ruwhiu is a lecturer based at Massey University, in the College of Health, School of Social Work at the Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand, however, also teaches on Palmerston North campus. Her social work background includes Māori mental health and tertiary teaching both in a polytechnic and university settings. Paulè has specific interests in decolonisation, transmission of te ao Māori knowledge and intergenerational patterns for Māori. Her PhD was on the process of decolonisation and the experiences of Māori social workers and Māori social work students. Paulè has published in various social workbooks and journal articles as a sole author and co-author. The topics have been around mana-enhancing practice, Māori Mental Health and the Rise in Iwi Social Services. Paulè was involved in the working group for Social Work Registration Board (SWRB) to discuss the Scope of Practice for social work. Paulè’s future ambitions and goals are to keep publishing as a contributor to Māori Scholarly literature and to offer decolonisation programmes throughout Aotearoa New Zealand for professionals.

Nicolette F. Sheridan, PhD. Professor and Head of the School of Nursing, Massey University, New Zealand. She is a registered nurse with 30 years in clinical practice, research and education. She was the first Associate Dean Equity in the health faculty, University of Auckland. She is leading a $1.3 million study investigating primary care patient outcomes, especially for Māori and Pacific peoples, with researchers from Cambridge University (UK) and Karolinska Institute (Sweden). She has led or been co-investigator in 36-studies; chaired expert advisory groups and was the government industry monitor of a wānanga-based Māori nursing programme. She is of Ngāpuhi descent.

Widad is an Online Learning Designer at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) that is based at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Prior to working in online course and curriculum development, Widad has worked as a project research assistant, teacher and university tutor. She holds a Master’s Degree in Education in which she has researched how social cohesion is incorporated into an initial teacher training (B.Ed) programme in South Africa. Most recently, she received her Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education Studies and will be pursing her PhD in which she would like to focus on inclusive and equitable learning design in the higher education context.

Janet manages the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) learning design unit. She has an Adult Education MPhil and has worked in educational design for 15 years. She is passionate about widening access and creating effective opportunities for learning. She leads the Redesigning Blended Courses Project (2021-2023) which integrates the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into models of blended learning. With other CILT colleagues, she ran the UCT MOOCs project which created 23 Massive Open Online Courses between 2015- 2019, and has been part of collaborative research on MOOC-takers living in Africa.

Proscovia Namubiru Ssentamu is an associate professor of education and head of the quality assurance department at Uganda Management Institute (UMI). She facilitates education-related Masters and PhD programmes and supervises graduate research. She is an external examiner on PhD programmes and a member of three Editorial Advisory Boards within and beyond Uganda. She has a Doctorate of Philosophy of Education (University of Bayreuth, Germany), MA in Curriculum Studies (London), MEd in Curriculum Studies (Makerere), PGDip in Human Resource Management (UMI), PGDip in Education Technology (Cape Town); Graduate Certificate in Quality Assurance (Melbourne), and BA/ED - Literature in English, English Language, Education (Makerere). Proscovia is a scholar, practitioner, trainer, researcher and consultant in quality assurance in education; curriculum design, development and evaluation; pedagogy and andragogy; educational research, monitoring and evaluation; and teacher professional development, and has published in these areas.

Lizzy has been working in the e-learning industry in various positions since 2011, and is fortunate to have served across all the sectors of the space, from NGO and corporate contexts, to secondary and higher education, both locally and internationally. She is the Co-founder of Who’s your ADDIE?, which is a marketplace where e-learning professionals can buy and sell e-learning resources and templates. She earned her PhD in English Literature at UWC in 2018, and is always looking for new ways to leverage the power of storytelling in her e-learning creations.

Suzanne works as a Learning Technologist at Dublin City University (DCU) supporting staff to integrate digital technologies in their teaching and learning. A Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA), Suzanne holds an MSc in Education (eLearning) and is currently in year four of a Doctorate of Education programme. Suzanne has used the ABC learning design process for a number of years, and has expertise in both face-to-face and online delivery modes. Suzanne has published research across a range of topics including: digital learning; large cohort teaching; and inclusive education.

Clare Thomson is a Digital Education Consultant in the Office for Digital Learning at Ulster University, in Northern Ireland, supporting staff across four geographical campuses. Clare has worked in higher education for over sixteen years and within the field of education technology for over twenty years. She is studying part time for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Her interests focus on inclusion, digital accessibility, creativity and care - there are too few opportunities for shared laughter in the academy. She is co-chair of the Association of Learning Technology Northern Ireland members groups, a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SHEA) and a Certified Member of the Association of Learning Technology.

Dr Nompilo Tshuma is a lecturer and researcher in the Centre for Higher and Adult Education at Stellenbosch University. She has been working with educational technology since 2005, as both a lecturer and an academic developer. In her current role she is the institutional coordinator for a regional PG Diploma in Higher Education. She also teaches modules in the Centre's two MPhil programmes and supervises Masters and PhD students. As a critical educational technology researcher, she employs social and critical theories to explore the context and politics of higher education, and their impact on educational technology practices.

Dr Mari van Wyk has a PhD in Computer Integrated Education and is a senior learning designer at the department of Comprehensive Online Education Services at the University of Pretoria. She is responsible for instructional design, research and curriculum development. Mari is an alumnus of the University of Stellenbosch, Tshwane University of Technology and University of Pretoria. Her area of expertise is blended learning, mobile learning, e-Learning and teaching with technology. She has presented both locally and internationally as well as published in both local and international journals on the topics of Blended learning, student experience / student voice, student use of videos and online learning design and student experiences in online modules.

Nokuthula is currently undertaking full-time PhD study in Education, in the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, researching academic staff development for blended learning approaches to curriculum design and pedagogy. She is also part of the UCT Project Team on Redesigning blended courses through Universal Design for Learning. Nokuthula is on study leave from the University of Eswatini, Institute for Distance Education, serving in an Instructional Design and Development portfolio. She contributed to the Southern African Teaching and Learning Forum (SAULT) research project on rurality and technology in higher education. Further, she co-created a Commonwealth of Learning course on Quality Assurance for Blended Learning.

Mia Zamora, Ph. D. is Associate Professor of English and Director of the MA in Writing Studies at Kean University in Union, NJ, USA. A recent recipient of Kean University’s “Professor of the Year” Award, she is a scholar of Electronic Literature and a #connectedlearning advocate. Zamora's commitment to equity, digital literacies, data rights, and intercultural understanding is clear in both her public scholarship and leadership work. As a leading voice for the practice of open networked education, she has founded several global learning networks including Equity Unbound (#unboundeq) and Networked Narratives (#netnarr).
MiaZamoraPhD.com

Dr. Adebayo is the Academic Manager at the STADIO School of Education on the Centurion mega campus and lecturer for the Postgraduate Certificate Education (PGCE) programme for Teaching Agricultural Science in the Further Education and Training (FET). He is the former Head of Academics and has over 20 years lecturing experience including work at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of South Africa. Dr. Adebayo’s research focuses on Inclusive and alternative Assessment, Critical pedagogy, and University-Community Engagement, including a peer-reviewed journal article with Dr. Ronicka Mudaly entitled ‘Creating a Decolonised Curriculum to Address Food Insecurity among University Students’.

Fiona Anderson has been in the education sector since 2003. She has gained knowledge and experience in the field of adult education, vocational education, inclusive education, open, distance and eLearning as well as educational technology. She is a young researcher with research interests predominantly in the field of educational technology and open, distance and eLearning. She possesses qualifications in the field of secondary education, vocational education, training and development and instructional design. In addition, she also possesses a Master in Education (Open, Distance and eLearning) which she has obtained from UNISA, amongst others. She is currently employed as a Learning Designer at the University of Namibia (UNAM). In her free time she pursues hobbies such as reading and travelling amongst others.

Arlene Archer is an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics and is the director of the Writing Centre at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research interests include multimodal pedagogies, social semiotics, and academic literacies. She is editor of Multimodality and Society and is currently investigating changing forms of writing in a digital age with a British Academy Fellowship.

Rehema Baguma is a Senior Lecturer & Researcher at the School of Computing & Informatics Technology, Makerere University, Uganda. Her Research interests include: Digital Inclusion, Human Centered design and accessibility of computing systems and services to persons with disabilities, Education Technology/eLearning and E-Governance. Previously, she also served as the Head Department of Information at Makerere University and a Research Fellow at United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV). She holds a PhD in Information Systems from Radboud University, Netherlands, a PGD in Education Technology from University of Cape Town, a Masters in Computer Application Technology from Huazhong University of Sc &Tech, China and a PG Certificate in Monitoring and Evaluation from Saarland University, German.

Dr Maha Bali is an Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning & Teaching at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She also teaches digital literacies and intercultural learning. She is a co-founder of virtuallyconnecting.org (a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences) and co-facilitator of Equity Unbound (an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum, which has also branched into academic community activities Continuity with Care and Inclusive Academia). She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield in the UK. She tweets a lot @bali_maha and blogs at blog.mahabali.me

Stephanie is a UCT-graduate who has been working in the e-learning industry since 2015. She’s the co-founder of Who’s your ADDIE?, a digital marketplace for instructional designers, and is currently working as a freelance learning experience designer in the corporate and NGO context. With a particular interest in creating more engaging and user-friendly interactive learning material, she earned her MsC in Interaction Design in 2020 from the Cyprus University of Technology in partnership with Tallinn University where she now teaches a master’s course in prototyping.

Over the past 30 years, Sue Bennett has worked as a writer, educational designer, higher education teacher and university academic. Her work investigates how people engage with technology in their everyday lives and in educational settings. Her aim is to develop a more holistic understanding of people's technology practices to inform research, practice and policy. She has been researching design thinking and learning design since 1999. She is currently a professor of education at the University of Wollongong.

Lucila Carvalho is a senior lecturer in e-learning & digital technologies at the Institute of Education, and co-director of the Equity Through Education Research Centre, Massey University (Auckland, New Zealand). Lucila’s research explores how knowledge and social structures shape the design and use of technology, and how technology influences social and educational experiences. Lucila’s latest books include Place-Based Spaces for Networked Learning (edited with Peter Goodyear and Maarten de Laat, Routledge 2017) and The Architecture of Productive Learning Networks (edited with Peter Goodyear, Routledge 2014). More information about Lucila’s work can be found on her website

Johannes Cronjé is a professor of Digital Teaching and Learning in the Department of Information Technology at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology . Prior to that he was the Dean Informatics and Design. He has supervised more than 140 Masters' and Doctoral students and published more than 65 peer reviewed papers. He is a sought-after international keynote speaker and has been a visiting professor at seven universities internationally.
Website | Google scholar profile

After receiving the Bachelor’s in Technology (BTech) Degree in Architectural Technology from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2007 and working in industry for a few years, Marga transitioned from architectural practice to academia in 2010. Over the years, Marga has worked at award-winning architectural practices and lectured at various esteemed private design institutions before joining the STADIO School of Architecture and Spatial Design in 2021. Her interests include learning design and alternate learning methods, which she hopes to focus on as she pursues postgraduate studies.

Irwin DeVries is committed to making higher education more accessible using open learning methods. His experience and research interests include distance education, instructional design and open educational practices. He has worked in professional and higher education settings, in both practice and leadership roles. Most recently Irwin was Director, Curriculum Development and interim Associate Vice President, Open Learning at Thompson Rivers University. He is currently Associate Faculty with Royal Roads University and Adjunct Faculty with the School of Education at Thompson Rivers University. Irwin has a PhD in Education from Simon Fraser University.

Helen DeWaard works with the Faculty of Education, Lakehead University, Orillia, and is a learning designer with the University of British Columbia Faculty of Education. She holds a Masters of Educational Technology from the University of British Columbia, a Masters of Education from the University of Toronto, OISE, and is a PhD candidate. She can be found at hjdewaard.ca. Helen actively tweets about education related topics ( @hj_dewaard) and blogs at Five Flames for Learning Attribution for the image is CC BY Sebastiaan Ter Burg

Dr. Eliana Elkhoury is an assistant professor at Athabasca University. She has extensive experience in teaching and learning in K12 and higher education settings within both Canada and internationally. Her work focuses on education in emergencies and innovation in teaching and learning. Eliana’s latest work includes training teachers in alternative ways of doing assessments. Dr. Elkhoury has received multiple grants to conduct research, and has published and presented on STEM education, equity in education, and alternative assessments. Her current research interests include: Innovation in teaching and learning, alternative assessment in multiple disciplines, open education and equity in assessment practices.

Nelisa Freitas works as a health practitioner and assistant planner in the home care services for the City of Mölndal, Gothenburg, Sweden. Prior to that she was a lecturer quantitative techniques, finance and accounting at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She has investment and retail banking, forensic accounting and business administration experience gained in South Africa and abroad.

Dr Daniela Gachago is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Innovation in Learning at Teaching at the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on academic staff development to transform teaching and learning in higher education, with a particular focus on socially just pedagogies such as digital storytelling. She is also interested in innovative course and curriculum design drawing from co-creative approaches such as design thinking. She received a PHD from the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and is the managing editor of CriSTaL, the journal for critical studies in teaching and learning in higher education.

Clare Gormley is an academic developer with DCU Teaching Enhancement Unit who has worked in digital education since 1996. She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA) and a Fellow of the Staff and Educational Development Association (FSEDA). Clare has an MSc in Applied eLearning and has worked with faculty from multiple disciplines to collaboratively design online and blended learning experiences. An advocate of ABC Learning Design, she co-led the influential Erasmus+ ABC to VLE project at DCU. She has also published in a range of peer-reviewed journals on professional learning in higher education and is currently undertaking an EdD in Digital Learning.

Jennifer K. Green is a senior lecturer in the School of Nursing, Massey University (Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand). Her PhD research is focusing on productive hybrid learning environments in times of transition. She is a registered nurse with 40 years in clinical and education environments. Her background includes perioperative nursing, and hybrid learning course development with a focus on team-based learning; cooperative inquiry; interprofessional learning; simulation; and clinical teaching. She is a fellow of the higher education academy and an award-winning educator with extensive tertiary and clinical teaching experience.

No NgāPuhi me Ngātiporou oku karanga
Kō Takota Paulè Ruwhiu taku ingoa
Tiheiwā mauri ora

Sandhya is a senior lecturer at the Centre for Innovative and Lifelong Learning - University of Mauritius. She is the online tutor and content developper for the BSc and MSc Educational Technology Programmes, specially related to Open educational resources. She is also coordinating the MA Educational Leadership programme in collaboration with the University of Seychelles and has reviewed and adapted the COL OER content for the SIDS contexts. She has conducted many workshops with COL, UNESCO, COMESA and the SADC on numerous e-learning and digital literacy projects and is currently pursuing her PhD studies in the field of Horizontal Collaborative Networks and development of T-Shaped graduates.

Dr. Michelle Harrison is a Senior Instructional Designer and Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University—Open Learning and is the past Chair of the Learning Design and Innovation department. Her research interests lie in learning design, open educational practices, and designing learning spaces with emerging educational technologies. She has a PhD in e-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning from Lancaster University in the UK, where she focused on exploring how we perceive and use space in networked learning environments.

Leo is a digital and open education specialist and researcher, a Digital Education Advisor at University College London, and a doctoral researcher at the Open University (UK)

Nazira is a lecturer and educational developer within the curriculum and teaching team at the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development (CLTD) at Wits. She facilitated previously on policy and governance at the Wits School of Governance (WSG) and consulted in government and taught widely in Finance and Business Management in South Africa and in the Middle East. She holds a Master’s degree from Wits University. Her PhD is within the broader field of the interdisciplinary digital knowledge economy with a particular focus on the critical digital pedagogic practice of academics. Her research focuses on academic identity, agency, continuous professional learning (CPL) and policy in higher education. She currently lectures and co-supervises on the Masters in Design and Development of Online Learning course at the WsoE among other programmes at the CLTD.

Chelsea obtained the National Diploma in Architectural Technology from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2019 and joined the academic team at the STADIO School of Architecture and Spatial Design the following year. She has a keen interest in design and sustainability, regenerative futures, anthropology, and environmentalism. Ms Horn is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Management through the University of South Africa. Chelsea considers herself a creative - deeply invested in understanding and designing for people and places.

Christine Immenga is the Senior Coordinator of Student Governance within the Department of Student Affairs at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has been working in Student Affairs for the last ten years and holds a Bachelor of Social Science (Law, Politics & Classics) as well as an Honours in Classical Studies from the University of Cape Town. Her current pursuits include co-lecturing on the Online Learning Design course which forms part of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education Technologies as well as pursuing a master’s degree in Higher Education Studies with a research focus on participatory curriculum

Shironica P. Karunanayaka is a Senior Professor in Educational Technology at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL). She is a former Dean of the Faculty of Education, OUSL. Prof. Karunanayaka has been an academic at OUSL since 1993. She holds a first class in the Degree of Bachelor of Science from the OUSL, and the Degree of Doctor of Education from the University of Wollongong, Australia, specializing in Information Technology in Education and Training. Being an active researcher, Prof. Karunanayaka has published widely. Her key research areas include ICT in education, learning experience design, Open Educational Resources and Open Educational Practices.

Japhet Hindundu Kazavanga is a teacher by profession with over ten (10) years of teaching experience. After his teaching career he joined a distance teaching college where he was responsible for materials development in that college for ten (10) years. He thereafter joined the University of Namibia as a materials developer, now called learning designer, where he spent more than seventeen (17) years. His interests are to explore the ways students learn and our roles as learning designers in the learning of distance students.

Whitney Kilgore, Ph.D. is co-founder and chief academic officer of iDesign, a partner to universities who wish to build, grow, and support online and blended course and program offerings. iDesign provides concierge, white-glove instructional design support to faculty partners. Their designers bring expertise, service, and project structure to bear and ensuring that faculty feel comfortable, informed, and in control throughout the process of creating online learning experiences for their students. Dr. Kilgore has led the development of programs across the U.S., Spain, the Philippines, China, Australia, Latin America, and the U.K. She is currently working on research related to care theory in online learning and the impact to practice of humanizing online teaching and learning. She edited and published the book Humanizing Online Teaching and Learning and Connecting the Dots: Book: Improving Student Outcomes with Exceptional Instructional Design.

Greig Krull is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Director for Digital Learning in the Commerce, Law and Management Faculty at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He holds a PhD in Technology-Enhanced Learning from the Open University of Catalonia (Spain) and an M.Com from Rhodes University. His research interests lie in open and flexible learning in higher education, particularly around effectively using technologies to promote quality teaching and learning and academic professional learning. He is a member of the National Association of Distance Education and Open Learning in South Africa executive committee and the International Advisory Board for the International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.

Rob Lowney is a Learning Technologist in the DCU Teaching Enhancement Unit with over 15 years experience in a variety of higher education roles. He is a Senior Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology. He is passionate about student voice and partnership and leads the Students as Partners in Assessment project at DCU. Rob has been an enthusiastic user of ABC Learning Design for several years, because of its collaborative ethos, and has facilitated workshops in a variety of formats and settings. He holds a BA and MA from University College Dublin and an MSc in Applied eLearning from Dublin Institute of Technology. He is currently undertaking an EdD in Digital Learning.

Caroline Magunje is an educational technologist with 9 years’ experience as a staff developer and instructional designer in Zimbabwe higher education. Caroline holds a Master’s in Education in ICTS from the University of Cape Town, South Africa and is currently studying towards a PhD in Educational Technologies at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa.

Anneri Meintjes is a researcher in the Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of the Free State. She has worked in different roles in higher education since 2012, with a broad focus on blended learning and educational technology but a particular interest in the use of online assessment in the South African higher education context. She is also involved in (and passionate about) academic development in good blended and online learning practice, as well as curriculum design.

Dr Serpil Meri-Yilan is an assistant professor of languages at Agri Ibrahim Cecen University, Turkey. She holds her MA and PhD in Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching from the University of Southampton. She is also a research collaborator of ImmerseMe and a country director of Turkey to the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association. She presents, writes and make reviews on foreign language education. Her research interests and areas of expertise also include e-learning, learner autonomy, motivation, digital storytelling, humanization, and social inclusion and justice.

Kate Molloy is a Learning Technologist with the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at NUI Galway and is currently the NUI Galway lead on the Irish Universities Association Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning project. Prior to taking up this role at NUI Galway, Kate had been a secondary English teacher in both the United States and Ireland for over a decade. As a teacher, she became interested in critical pedagogy, inclusivity, and the use of technology. In 2015, she moved into higher education where she supports staff teaching with technology. Her work focuses on the informed and ethical use of technology in higher education, learning design, and open practice. Kate is Secretary, National Executive of the Computers in Education Society of Ireland (CESI), and was a Digital Pedagogy Lab Fellow in 2019.

Dr Moodley is in the field of educational technology. Her research focuses on blended learning, e-learning, online learning and various different educational technology. She publishes in field of social change, science education and technology education. She works in the unit for Comprehensive Online Education Services as a learning designer and is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education.

Dr. Tannis Morgan is AVP, Academic Innovation at Vancouver Community College. For the past two years she worked as an Advisor, Learning and Teaching, and Researcher, Open Education Practices at BCcampus. Her research is at the intersection of distance education, educational technology, and open education, and is currently focused on impact and OEP, and social justice frameworks for measuring impact. Tannis is one of the founding members of the OpenETC , a community of educators, technologists, and designers sharing their expertise to foster and support open ed tech infrastructure for the BC post-secondary sector.

Jolanda Morkel is the Head: Instructional Design at STADIO Higher Education since January 2021. During her former 20-year academic career at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), she designed, coordinated, and facilitated various transformative learning and teaching interventions employing innovative learning technologies. These blended and flexible student-centered learning interventions were designed to serve culturally diverse, non-traditional, and working students to promote access, diversity, and inclusion at the University. Her current research focuses on learning experience design, studio-based education, and design thinking for higher education. Jolanda Morkel is a Professional licenced Architect.

Travis’ research focuses on original online content creation and how authors’ digital voices reflect structural enablers and constraints. He has explored teenage visual artists development of e-portfolios for connected learning and journalism students’ designs of data infographics. He currently researches insulin resistance health experts’ use of digital platforms for promoting an emergent scientific paradigm.

Oluwaseun Oyekola is an Associate Professor in the department of Chemical Engineering, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa, where he also serves as the postgraduate studies coordinator. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He links teaching and learning with research and scholarship, with emphasis on national relevance and global excellence. His scientific research interests include resource recovery from waste materials, renewable energy and bioremediation of wastewater. His research in teaching and learning addresses the issue of social justice. He has over 90 publications in peer-reviewed academic journals, conference proceedings and other knowledge hubs.

Dr Nicola Palitt coordinates the efforts of the Educational Technology team in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) at Rhodes University and offers professional development opportunities for academics to use technologies effectively in their roles as educators and researchers. Nicola provides learning design support and consultation in relation to teaching with technology (technology integration) and blended and online teaching and learning. She also supports lecturers to design appropriate technology-mediated learning experiences for their students. Nicola supervises postgraduate students and co-teaches formal courses in Higher Education. She enjoys meeting EdTech practitioners and researchers from across the globe and is part of the e/merge Africa team. Read more about Nicola on her university’s staff page or follow her on Twitter at nicolapallitt .

Dr. Michael Paskevicius is Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on learning design practices, the development of digital literacies, and supporting personal knowledge management in an environment of rapid technological change. Michael has worked in higher education institutions across Southern Africa and Western Canada since 2005, supporting collaborative, creative, and personalized approaches to learning. As an advocate for openness in education, his research explores the integration of open source tools, open educational resources, and the development of open educational practices among educators.

Patrice is Associate Director of Learning Design, Technology and Media within the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Through her research she looks to develop course and systems level structures that support diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging and justice. She is passionate about increasing global access to STEM education for women. She believes that by increasing access to education for women we can enable more communities across the globe to thrive and flourish. Patrice holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering (B.S.), and Business Management (MBA) from Union College, and Curriculum and Instruction (Ph.D.) from University at Albany.

Rubina D Rampersad is a trained educational technologist at the University of Mauritius, with more than 25 years of experience. She supports content experts to design modules on distance, online and blended learning modes. She also works with the industry to mount programmes that are customised to the needs of the employers in terms of mode of delivery and assessment. She has designed MOOCs targeting an international audience with more than 10,000 students. She holds an MA in Distance Education and an MSc in Educational Technologies.

Mashudu is an Online Learning Designer on the CILT Course and Curriculum Development team. She received her Post Graduate Diploma specialising in Education Technology with the University of Cape Town and has held various teaching positions at previous educational institutions prior to joining CILT. Mashudu is currently invested in a Masters of Education with a focus on the shifting roles and identities of academic staff in the blended and online teaching and learning spaces. She believes in lifelong learning and fostering 21st century skills through learning experiences.

David Redelinghuys is a game developer with a special interest in developing educational games. David also spent the last two years as a part-time lecturer in the Faculty of Business & Management Sciences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) where he gained first had exposure and experience of the online learning environment within a higher education setting. David holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB) as well as qualifications in Project and Programme Management from Cranefiled College.

Dr. Verena Roberts is an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary and an Instructional Designer with Thompson Rivers University, Open Learning. Her research interests include learning design, open learning, open educational resources (OER) and pedagogy (OEP), participatory learning and the ethics of educational technology.

Over 10 years of experience leading e-learning and blended learning projects in different types of higher education programs and government entities as well as training for public officials and to promote behavioral changes in the community. I have trained teachers and subject matter experts to achieve educational innovation, learning design and the pedagogical use of ICT. I am a volunteer at Solacyt, a non-profit organization which is a member of an international network that works on the promotion, dissemination, and scientific literacy, especially among the school population. Also, I have written some papers in the field of education.

Paulè A. Ruwhiu is a lecturer based at Massey University, in the College of Health, School of Social Work at the Albany Campus, Auckland, New Zealand, however, also teaches on Palmerston North campus. Her social work background includes Māori mental health and tertiary teaching both in a polytechnic and university settings. Paulè has specific interests in decolonisation, transmission of te ao Māori knowledge and intergenerational patterns for Māori. Her PhD was on the process of decolonisation and the experiences of Māori social workers and Māori social work students. Paulè has published in various social workbooks and journal articles as a sole author and co-author. The topics have been around mana-enhancing practice, Māori Mental Health and the Rise in Iwi Social Services. Paulè was involved in the working group for Social Work Registration Board (SWRB) to discuss the Scope of Practice for social work. Paulè’s future ambitions and goals are to keep publishing as a contributor to Māori Scholarly literature and to offer decolonisation programmes throughout Aotearoa New Zealand for professionals.

Nicolette F. Sheridan, PhD. Professor and Head of the School of Nursing, Massey University, New Zealand. She is a registered nurse with 30 years in clinical practice, research and education. She was the first Associate Dean Equity in the health faculty, University of Auckland. She is leading a $1.3 million study investigating primary care patient outcomes, especially for Māori and Pacific peoples, with researchers from Cambridge University (UK) and Karolinska Institute (Sweden). She has led or been co-investigator in 36-studies; chaired expert advisory groups and was the government industry monitor of a wānanga-based Māori nursing programme. She is of Ngāpuhi descent.

Widad is an Online Learning Designer at the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) that is based at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Prior to working in online course and curriculum development, Widad has worked as a project research assistant, teacher and university tutor. She holds a Master’s Degree in Education in which she has researched how social cohesion is incorporated into an initial teacher training (B.Ed) programme in South Africa. Most recently, she received her Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education Studies and will be pursing her PhD in which she would like to focus on inclusive and equitable learning design in the higher education context.

Janet manages the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT) learning design unit. She has an Adult Education MPhil and has worked in educational design for 15 years. She is passionate about widening access and creating effective opportunities for learning. She leads the Redesigning Blended Courses Project (2021-2023) which integrates the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into models of blended learning. With other CILT colleagues, she ran the UCT MOOCs project which created 23 Massive Open Online Courses between 2015- 2019, and has been part of collaborative research on MOOC-takers living in Africa.

Proscovia Namubiru Ssentamu is an associate professor of education and head of the quality assurance department at Uganda Management Institute (UMI). She facilitates education-related Masters and PhD programmes and supervises graduate research. She is an external examiner on PhD programmes and a member of three Editorial Advisory Boards within and beyond Uganda. She has a Doctorate of Philosophy of Education (University of Bayreuth, Germany), MA in Curriculum Studies (London), MEd in Curriculum Studies (Makerere), PGDip in Human Resource Management (UMI), PGDip in Education Technology (Cape Town); Graduate Certificate in Quality Assurance (Melbourne), and BA/ED - Literature in English, English Language, Education (Makerere). Proscovia is a scholar, practitioner, trainer, researcher and consultant in quality assurance in education; curriculum design, development and evaluation; pedagogy and andragogy; educational research, monitoring and evaluation; and teacher professional development, and has published in these areas.

Lizzy has been working in the e-learning industry in various positions since 2011, and is fortunate to have served across all the sectors of the space, from NGO and corporate contexts, to secondary and higher education, both locally and internationally. She is the Co-founder of Who’s your ADDIE?, which is a marketplace where e-learning professionals can buy and sell e-learning resources and templates. She earned her PhD in English Literature at UWC in 2018, and is always looking for new ways to leverage the power of storytelling in her e-learning creations.

Suzanne works as a Learning Technologist at Dublin City University (DCU) supporting staff to integrate digital technologies in their teaching and learning. A Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA), Suzanne holds an MSc in Education (eLearning) and is currently in year four of a Doctorate of Education programme. Suzanne has used the ABC learning design process for a number of years, and has expertise in both face-to-face and online delivery modes. Suzanne has published research across a range of topics including: digital learning; large cohort teaching; and inclusive education.

Clare Thomson is a Digital Education Consultant in the Office for Digital Learning at Ulster University, in Northern Ireland, supporting staff across four geographical campuses. Clare has worked in higher education for over sixteen years and within the field of education technology for over twenty years. She is studying part time for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Her interests focus on inclusion, digital accessibility, creativity and care - there are too few opportunities for shared laughter in the academy. She is co-chair of the Association of Learning Technology Northern Ireland members groups, a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SHEA) and a Certified Member of the Association of Learning Technology.

Dr Nompilo Tshuma is a lecturer and researcher in the Centre for Higher and Adult Education at Stellenbosch University. She has been working with educational technology since 2005, as both a lecturer and an academic developer. In her current role she is the institutional coordinator for a regional PG Diploma in Higher Education. She also teaches modules in the Centre's two MPhil programmes and supervises Masters and PhD students. As a critical educational technology researcher, she employs social and critical theories to explore the context and politics of higher education, and their impact on educational technology practices.

Dr Mari van Wyk has a PhD in Computer Integrated Education and is a senior learning designer at the department of Comprehensive Online Education Services at the University of Pretoria. She is responsible for instructional design, research and curriculum development. Mari is an alumnus of the University of Stellenbosch, Tshwane University of Technology and University of Pretoria. Her area of expertise is blended learning, mobile learning, e-Learning and teaching with technology. She has presented both locally and internationally as well as published in both local and international journals on the topics of Blended learning, student experience / student voice, student use of videos and online learning design and student experiences in online modules.

Nokuthula is currently undertaking full-time PhD study in Education, in the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, researching academic staff development for blended learning approaches to curriculum design and pedagogy. She is also part of the UCT Project Team on Redesigning blended courses through Universal Design for Learning. Nokuthula is on study leave from the University of Eswatini, Institute for Distance Education, serving in an Instructional Design and Development portfolio. She contributed to the Southern African Teaching and Learning Forum (SAULT) research project on rurality and technology in higher education. Further, she co-created a Commonwealth of Learning course on Quality Assurance for Blended Learning.

Mia Zamora, Ph. D. is Associate Professor of English and Director of the MA in Writing Studies at Kean University in Union, NJ, USA. A recent recipient of Kean University’s “Professor of the Year” Award, she is a scholar of Electronic Literature and a #connectedlearning advocate. Zamora's commitment to equity, digital literacies, data rights, and intercultural understanding is clear in both her public scholarship and leadership work. As a leading voice for the practice of open networked education, she has founded several global learning networks including Equity Unbound (#unboundeq) and Networked Narratives (#netnarr).
MiaZamoraPhD.com