ODLAA - Executive Officers

The Association is managed by an Executive Committee elected every two years from Association members. The Executive members serving until the end of 2007 include:

President
Dr Fred Lockwood
Emeritus Professor of Learning and Teaching
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Between 1975 and 2000 Dr Lockwood worked within the Open University (OU) Institute of Educational Technology. During this period he was an Educational Technologist working with OU Course teams and Chairing Teams. During the period he was also Head of the Teaching and Consultancy Centre, Head, Professional Development in Educational Technology programme (PDET) and Deputy Director.

In January 2000 Fred was appointed Head: Learning + Teaching Unit, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and Professor of Learning and Teaching. Fred was part of the senior management team within Academic Division and responsible for the realisation of the MMU Learning and Teaching Strategy. In February 2006 Fred was appointed Emeritus Professor in Learning and Teaching.

His research interests are broad; they range from psychometric to illuminative studies as reflected in personal and institutional research. They span all phases of course development - from conception and planning and from production and presentation to evaluation. Fred has been appointed Visiting Professor, Lecturer, Expert and Educator to over 20 international institutions of higher education. He has undertaken over 30 national and international consultancies.

In 2006 he was a Visiting Scholar to the Auckland University of Technology and the University of the South Pacific. He undertook consultancies on behalf of the Open University of Malaysia, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Open University of the Philippines and University of Papua New Guinea.

In 2007 he was a Visiting Scholar to the University of Wisconsin, USA, and will be a Visiting Scholar at Monash University, Australia. In the last twenty years Fred has been invited to be keynote speaker at 26 national and international conferences as well being invited to conduct 20 pre or post conference workshops.

Fred is Series Editor of the Routledge Open and Flexible Learning Series. In 2007 he expects the fiftieth book in the Series will have been published; the Series is the largest of its kind in the world. Fred has recently been appointed Series Editor of the new Commonwealth of Learning eResource Series. In the period August - December 2007 Fred was Interim President of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia. He provides professional advice in the field of open and distance learning to grant awarding bodies and conference organisers. He sits on the Editorial Boards of ten journals.

Vice President
Dr John G Hedberg
Millennium Innovations Chair in ICT and Education
Director of the Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre
at Macquarie University

The Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre is a learning partnership with the NSW State Department of Education and Training to develop innovative programs in technology enhanced learning for students and teachers. He is known for the constructivist learning environments that he has designed, culminating in a British Academy award for an interactive theatre CD-ROM entitled StageStruck . His most recent book is Evaluating interactive learning systems with Thomas Reeves.

John Hedberg is working on several research projects about the use of ICTs in learning. These include:

Dr Hedberg is a Past President of the Sydney Chapter of the National Society for Performance and Instruction and was Editor of the Australian Journal of Educational Technology from 1988 until 1997. He currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Journal of Interactive Learning Research, ALT-J, Distance Education and the program committee for EdMedia. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Educational Media International, a refereed journal for those interested in the application of media and technology in learning contexts throughout the world.

Secretary
Dr. Chris Brook
General Manager
Academic Products and Services
Open Universities Australia

Chris Brook is a Post Doctoral Research Scholar in the School of Education at Edith Cowan University. He has extensive experience in education including primary, secondary and tertiary settings. He has worked as an Instructional Designer and has been actively engaged in the design and development of online learning materials. Current research includes the exploration of online learning communities and the use of ICT in school settings, blended learning and teacher education, gifted and talented education and online technologies and the use of video to support learning.

Treasurer
Dr Belinda Tynan
Leader of the Academic Unit Team
Teaching and Learning Centre
The University of New England

Dr Belinda is the Leader and Senior Lecturer of the Academic Unit Team within the Teaching and Learning Centre. She manages a staff of 10 in both academic development and student support. A key responsibility is academic staff development through the GCHE. Her background is in the field of academic staff development, teacher education, distance education and arts education. She has worked internationally and received a range of internal and competitive funds. Her research background is in the area of academic development and models of research collaboration. Belinda is also an editor for HERD and ILTJE which are key journals relevant to teaching and learning in higher education. She has extensive project management experience and is currently involved in leading and supporting a range of projects. Current projects: ALPN Project (Carrick Project: $220,000); HEEP Project ($40,000): Carrick Project developing our staff ($220,000).

Executive Editor Distance Education
Associate Professor Som Naidu
Research Development and Evaluation
Information and Education
The University of Melbourne

Som Naidu is currently Associate Professor in Educational Technology at the University of Melbourne. Dr. Naidu possesses undergraduate qualifications in Education and graduate qualifications in Educational Technology from Montreal, Canada.

Som’s career in open and distance education dates back to the early 1980s at the University of the South Pacific. Since then he has worked in various roles related to the field of distance education and educational technology in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the Unites States of America. He has also worked on several consultancy projects in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore.

Dr. Naidu's research and work experience includes the design, development and evaluation of programs for a wide range of contexts including distance and non-distance education settings. Most recently he has led the development of Masters and Bachelor's level degree programs using scenario-based learning in Sri Lanka and India.

Dr. Naidu is currently Executive Editor of "Distance Education" (the journal of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia) which is published by the Taylor & Francis Group. He also serves on the editorial Advisory Boards of several related journals in the field. He is a co-series editor of the Routledge Book Series on “Open and Flexible Learning” which is also published by Taylor and Francis.

Executive Officer
Professor Ian Macdonald
Director
Teaching and Learning Centre
The University of New England

Professor Ian Macdonald is the Director of the Teaching and Learning Centre at the University of New England. His research primarily deals with promoting learner metacognition, the development of effective learning environments, and teacher professional development at all levels. Ian has worked extensively in Asian universities, also spending two years working with the Shell (EP) Learning Centre in the Hague. The latter experience has led to the development of the concept of Workplace Embedded Higher Education being developed by UNE. He is the Co-Editor of the HERDSA journal Higher Education Research and Development.

Immediate Past President
Ron Oliver
Pro-Vice Chancellor (Teaching and Learning)
Edith Cowan University, Perth Western Australia

Ron Oliver is Pro-Vice Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia. Previously as Professor of Interactive Multimedia he taught in the School of Communications and Contemporary Arts at Edith Cowan University in courses associated with multimedia, instructional technologies and e-learning. He has explored and written widely on technology-based learning designs, and in particular, authentic learning and task-based learning.

Current projects in which he is involved include: the design and delivery of authentic learning settings, the use of technology to promote learner engagement in large undergraduate classes,and reusable learning designs and e-learning resources.

Publications
Mr Stephen Relf
Educational Designer
Centre for Enhancing Learning and Teaching
Charles Sturt University

Stephen Relf has been in the Distance Education industry for about twenty years having started his career at the Darling Downes Institute of Advanced Education, Toowoomba before moving to the Mitchell College of Advanced Education in Bathurst before it formed Charles Sturt University.

He has been involved in consultancies for the University with the Teachers college in the Solomons Islands; University of Newcastle; Royal College of Nursing; Fairfax Publishing; and Access Computer Mediated Communication. The last consultation was for the production of an online course called 'Media skills online' which in 1999 was the Winner of Education and Training Award, conducted by The Australian Information Industry Association.

His research interests are about writing distance education online. At the moment he is exploring a model of literacy that centres the social and technological components as central to literacy encapsulated in the concept metaphor l(IT)eracy. Pedagogic interests centre on working with academic staff eclectic approaches and assisting an articulation of their issues working on Bernstein's concept of changing the horizontal discourses of pedagogy to vertical specialist discourses. His preferred pedagogical approach is a social constructivist pedagogy.

Committee Member
Dr Rod Sims,
Principal Consultant,Knowledgecraft
Adjunct Professor, Instructional Design for Online Learning, Capella University,
Principal Consultant,Knowledgecraft

Rod Sims has a background of over 30 years in the computer and education sectors, with commerical experience in mainframe and PC systems, operating systems, on-line databases and application software. Since 1979 he has focused on educational technology, specialising in the design and development of effective interactive training and educational resources, especially e-learning environments. He has designed and developed a range of interactive products using a variety of authoring tools for business and industry including Fujitsu Australia, the Commonwealth Bank, NSW State Rail and Colonial State Bank.

Over the past 16 years, Dr Sims has held senior academic posts at the University of Technology Sydney, at which time he designed and implemented a Graduate Diploma in Computer-Based Learning, Southern Cross University, where he designed and implemented a Bachelor of Educational Multimedia, a Bachelor of Multimedia and a Masters of Educational Multimedia, and Deakin University where he was responsible for a team of educational and multimedia experts who supported faculty curriculum initiatives, especially those using online learning and collaborative strategies. Over the past two years Dr Sims was in the role of Academic Director for QANTM Education, a private provider of higher education programs.

Dr Sims is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), a Fellow and Past-President of the Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) and Past-President of the Division of Learning and Performance Environments (DLPE) within the Association for Educational and Communications Technology (AECT). He was convenor of the 1992 and 2000 ASCILITE Conferences and is Executive Vice-President of the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (IBSTPI).

Bob Boughton is an adult educator who has worked mainly with Indigenous communities and organisations in Australia. He is now a senior lecturer in at UNE, teaching adult education by distance, and underataking research in East Timor on the emergence of that country's adult education system.