Keynote Speakers

Dr Gary Poole

Gary is the Director of the Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth and the Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Gary has won a 3M Teaching Fellowship, which is a Canadian national teaching award, an Excellence in Teaching award from Simon Fraser University, and a Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal for contributions to Higher Education. Dr. Poole was the President of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from 2000 to 2004. He is the co-author of "Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education," and "The Psychology of Health and Health Care: A Canadian Perspective."

His research interests in higher education include the identification of valid measures of educational impact at the institutional level and understanding students' experiences in community service learning environments and self-directed projects.

Further information: http://www.tag.ubc.ca/about/institute/ISoTL.php

Informing and Enhancing our Teaching: Moving from Inference to Evidence

In this keynote address, Gary will begin by looking at some examples of pedagogical research and reasons for the attention and excitement the scholarship of teaching and learning has attracted at institutions of higher education around the world. Gary will also look at ways in which Institutions in Canada and elsewhere are building programmes to support this research. Following this, Gary will look at some of the research that attendees would like to conduct concerning teaching and learning in their classes. From this discussion research questions will be generated, with an exploration of outcome measures that could be well-suited to answer these questions.

Ron is the Professor of Interactive Multimedia in the School of Communications and Multimedia at Edith Cowan University, and has been involved in the field of e-learning, computer education, multimedia and instructional technologies since 1977. Currently he lectures in multimedia and communications programs at ECU and supervises postgraduate students.

His qualifications include PhD, Master, Diploma and Bachelor degrees in mathematics, computing, education and computer education. He has written many books on computing, multimedia and e-learning for school, VET and university courses. Ron is a member of a number of e-learning associations and on the editorial boards of numerous international journals.

He has a teaching research background in multimedia and e-learning and currently leads a major research team at ECU in this field. He has published approx. 300 papers and monographs and has contributions in most of the major international journals in this field. Has received over $4M in research, development and university consultancy income.

He has had considerable experience teaching with learning technologies and has won numerous awards and recognition at the local, national and international level for teaching excellence including the ECU Vice Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000 and the inaugural Australian Award for the use of multimedia in University Teaching in 1997.

Further information: http://elrond.scam.ecu.edu.au/oliver/

Abstract of Presentation

Title
Learning on the job: teachers as learners

Abstract
In this presentation Ron will discuss aspects of the scholarship of learning and teaching. The presentation will explore how university teachers can (and should) engage in activities of continuous improvement and learning in relation to their teaching activities. It will consider the pedagogical knowledge and skills that necessarily underpin effective university teaching. Ron will draw from examples of the research he has undertaken within his own teaching practice. He will demonstrate how teaching problems and challenges have prompted and led many of his research activities and will demonstrate how the research outcomes have informed and guided his subsequent teaching and teaching practices.