Author Biographies

Victor Azuaje – Mount Saint Mary College, NY

Victor Azuaje is Professor of Hispanic Studies at Mount Saint Mary College, NY. He has a Master’s Degree in Linguistics from the University of Delaware, a Master’s Degree in Spanish and a Ph.D. in Spanish from Temple University. He won the 2020-2021 MSMC Teaching Innovation Award: “Review of his courses indicates thoughtful and deliberate planning and execution as well as broad effectiveness and a novel way of employing technology.” His teaching practice has been guided by the idea that a hybrid classroom is the perfect setting for an engagement version of the Turing test or imitation game: a student asks questions to an in-person and an online instructor—or the online persona of a hybrid instructor—to find out who is less engaging. The online instructor wins if the student fails to identify her. When Prof. Azuaje is not playing this game, he reads a lot and writes a bit. He is the author of the books La critica de la obra ausente, winner of the “Enrique Bernardo Nuñez” Biennial Essay Award, and Bajo la sombra de Azazel: Sacrificio, alegoría y conflicto social en Ramos Sucre, winner of the “José Antonio Ramos Sucre” Biennial Essay Award.

Maha Bali – American University in Cairo

Maha Bali is Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield, UK. She is 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 Socially Just Academia, and a collaboration with OneHE: Community-building Resources. Most recently, she co-organized the Mid-Year Festival (MYFest) via Equity Unbound, a way of re-imagining professional learning online as nourishing, equitable, emergent, communal, creative and agentic. She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education. She blogs regularly at http://blog.mahabali.me and tweets @bali_maha

Martha Fay Burtis – Plymouth State University

Martha Fay Burtis, is the associate director and learning developer at the Open Learning and Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth State University. In this role, she supports faculty with instructional design and pedagogical innovation. Prior to coming to PSU, she was the founding director of the Digital Knowledge Center at the University of Mary Washington. At UMW, she also administered faculty and student development projects, including the Online Learning Initiative and Domain of One’s Own. She has particular expertise and interest in digital literacy and pedagogy; student-centered teaching and learning; and critical instructional design.

Autumm Caines – University of Michigan – Dearborn

Autumm Caines is a liminal space. You will find her somewhere between designer, educator, and technologist; at the time if this writing she is working as an instructional designer at the University of Michigan – Dearborn. Autumm was a first generation non-traditional college student who brings a unique lens to her professional work as an advocate for those who often do not get a chance to participate in higher education. Autumm’s work challenges status quo ideas of educational design and techno-solutionism in education through a critical analysis which weaves together constructs of student agency, digital privacy, equity, and surveillance. For examples of Autumm’s projects, publications, presentations, and teaching experiences see https://autumm.org/

Amy Collier – Middlebury

As the Associate Provost for Digital Learning at Middlebury, Amy Collier provides strategic vision and leadership for Middlebury to create and sustain a global learning community through the effective use of digital pedagogies and technologies. In addition to leading Middlebury’s Office of Digital Learning and Inquiry, she works on critical issues in higher education’s intersections with digital technologies, such as privacy and student data, and equity and inclusion. She is the co-founder of Higher Education After Surveillance, a global group of educators and scholars imagining and developing alternatives to problematic visibility & surveillance in higher education. This group recently developed a prototype for a Higher Education Surveillance Observatory to help explore the landscape of surveillance and privacy across the higher education sector, and a Data Stories project, which invites speculative stories about surveillance that re-shape our thinking on its role in higher education. She is also also a co-facilitator of the Design Justice Network’s Instructional Design Working Group, which aims to help Instructional Designers explore and adopt design justice principles in their work. Amy blogs rarely at redpincushion.me and tweets irregularly at @amcollier

Clayton D. Colmon – University of Pennsylvania

Clayton Colmon is the Associate Director of Instructional Design for Penn Arts & Sciences Online Learning. His work grows out of interests in race, gender, sexuality, science fiction, and digital studies, as intersecting entry points for examining technology’s impact on community-building efforts for Black folks and minoritized groups in digital environments. He earned a BA in English and Political Science from Rutgers University and holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Delaware. Clay believes that interdependent, lifelong, learning is integral to any sustainable social system. As such, he supports efforts to design spaces for pluralistic, justice-driven, pedagogies that can help us all get and stay free. In addition to his instructional design and curriculum development work, he teaches courses on many things, including digital strategies and culture, Black speculative futures, and queer projects for digital publics. You can find him on Twitter @warmclay.

Robin DeRosa – Plymouth State University

Robin DeRosa is the Director of the Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth State University, part of the University System of New Hampshire. The Open CoLab is a dynamic, praxis-powered hub dedicated to innovative teaching and learning and a community-driven approach to academic professional development; the CoLab focuses on instructional design, open education, interdisciplinary learning, and increasing the public impact of the academy.

Daniela Gachago – University of Cape Town

Daniela is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Innovation for Learning and Teaching (CILT) at the University of Cape Town. Her research focuses on academic staff development for blended and online learning in higher education, with a particular focus on developing socially just course and curriculum designs drawing from co-creative approaches such as design thinking in contexts of high inequality. She completed a Masters in Adult Education at the University of Botswana and received a PHD from the School of Education at the University of Cape Town. She is a C1 rated researcher and 2022 Fulbright Scholar has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. She is the managing editor of CriSTaL, the journal for critical studies in teaching and learning in higher education. She blogs at http://danielagachago.blogspot.com and tweets under @dgachago17

Jan Hare – University of British Columbia

Jan Hare is an Anishinaabe scholar and educator from the M’Chigeeng First Nation, located in northern Ontario. As an Indigenous scholar, educator, and administrator, she has sought to transform education in ways that are inclusive of Indigenous knowledges, pedagogies, and languages.. Her research is concerned with improving educational outcomes for Indigenous learners by centering Indigenous knowledge systems within educational reform from early childhood education, K-12 schooling, through  to post-secondary, She designed and developed the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education, which has been taken by over 60,000 participants world wide. Jan holds a Canada Research in Indigenous Pedagogies in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, where she is Professor and Dean of Education.

Jeni Henrickson – Middlebury

Jeni is an instructional designer with Middlebury, working with faculty, staff, and students across the Middlebury campuses. As a member of the Office and Digital Learning and Inquiry (DLINQ), I help design pedagogical approaches, tech integration, and meaningful learning experiences in digital spaces across the institution.

Hannah Hounsell – Plymouth State University

Hannah Hounsell is the Learning Advisor for the Open Learning & Teaching Collaborative at Plymouth State University. Hannah has spent five years working professionally in the field of public, higher education. Her work has intersected with many different spheres, including student services and advising, instructional design, faculty/ staff professional development, and administration and operations. Her current position combines student advising for an indivdualized major program with faculty professional development. Hannah’s teaching work began in the field of secondary education when she was certified to teach English in grades 5-12 and pursued several long-term substitution roles. Her scholarship interests include critical/ traditional instructional design, student-led professional development, and peer-to-peer mentorship. In 2021, Hannah received a graduate certificate in Instructional Design and graduated in 2022 with her Masters in Education in Currriculum and Instruction, which inspired interest in critiquing frameworks and methods for traditional instructional design.

Surita Jhangiani – University of British Columbia

Surita Jhangiani is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, Point Grey Campus, which is situated on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people. She primarily teaches in the Bachelor of Education program and also teaches upper level graduate courses in the area of Human Development, Learning and Culture. Her research interests include scholarship related to open education, alternative grading, pedagogy of care and mental health. Her work is informed by a post-colonial, diversity and gender lens.

Meryl Krieger – University of Pennsylvania

Meryl Krieger is Senior Learning Designer for Penn Arts & Sciences Online Learning at the University of Pennsylvania. She also co-leads the Digital Strategies & Culture program within the Penn Liberal & Professional Studies Online program and teaches interdisciplinary social sciences courses in that program. Her focus is on accessible and equitable course development and nontraditional student learners, and sees online learning as a tool for increasing access and opportunities for quality education to the widest possible audiences. Meryl earned her PhD in Folklore & Ethnomusicology from Indiana University Bloomington, which became a focal point for her developing research and teaching practices on digital technologies and the learning process.

Sarah Lohnes Watulak – Middlebury

As the Director of Digital Pedagogy and Media in the Office of Digital Learning and Inquiry (DLINQ) at Middlebury College, Sarah leads a team of instructional designers focused on creating digital learning opportunities and environments that support learner agency, equity, and critical engagement with the digital. She also leads DLINQ’s Inclusive Design Studio, a hub for exploration and application of inclusive design and design justice practices across contexts. Sarah earned her Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University in 2008, and before joining Middlebury, was an Associate Professor of Instructional Technology in the College of Education at Towson University. For more on Sarah’s recent research and writing: http://sarahlw.middcreate.net/  and @sarahlw6 on Twitter.

Mary Mathis Burnett – Arizona State University

Mary Mathis Burnett is an instructor and Manager of Instructional Design and Inclusive Pedagogy in Watts College of Arizona State University, has more than 15 years experience in instructional design, and holds an Ed.D. from Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at ASU. Her lived experiences activate her passion to increase awareness of her own biases, those unavoidably acculturated from society and the more socially just ones created in the vacuum the old ones leave behind. Her work joins the efforts and experiences of others in the field moving to disrupt the apparent power dynamics in higher education, advocating for equity and access, and reducing harm done by systems, structures, and the status quo to those with racialized or marginalized identities. You can find her on Twitter (@burnettical) and at https://critpedframework.com

Cynthia Nicol – University of British Columbia, Canada

Cynthia Nicol is Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy and holds the David F. Robitaille Professorship in Mathematics and Science Education. Cynthia works alongside rural, remote, Indigenous and other communities to explore new strategies for supporting teachers in designing and implementing culturally responsive mathematics education and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education. Her current projects include researching ways to support all learners, including teachers, to connect math, community and culture, with land-based pedagogies and Indigenous storywork. Cynthia is committed to building capacity in communities for learners to use mathematics and STEM, to not only interpret the world, but also change it. You can find her work at the Indigenous Math Education Network: https://indigenous.mathnetwork.educ.ubc.ca/ and the David Robitaille International STEM Network: https://dfr.stemnetwork.educ.ubc.ca/

Nicola Pallitt – Rhodes University

Nicola Palitt is an Educational Technology Specialist at senior lecturer level in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) at Rhodes University in South Africa. She holds a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Cape Town. Nicola’s research interests include online learning design, networked professional development and online supervision. She supervises postgraduate students, co-teaches formal courses in Higher Education and co-facilitates professional development opportunities for lecturers in various settings. She is part of the e/merge Africa team, an online professional development network for educational technology researchers and practitioners in African higher education. She is also involved in the leadership of the Culture, Learning and Technology (CLT) division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). Read more about Nicola here or follow her on Twitter @nicolapallitt

Nicola Parkin – Flinders University 

Nicola Parkin likes questions, enigmas, and human depths. She is a higher education practitioner who locates her work in the difficult spaces between teaching, learning, professional practice, philosophy, design, and creative practices. Nicola’s educative commitments have been forged over many decades of work in community cultural development and adult community education programs – however, it is the wild untamed inner forces of learning and becoming in each individual that most delight and intrigue her. Methodologically, Nicola leans in to the existential, the hermeneutical, the phenomenological. Her research is about finding meaningful ways to see, say and save the deeper undercurrents of our educative work, and how we might purposefully and profitably bring these qualitative riches into our everyday practices. She has worked at Flinders University in South Australia for many years supporting program and learning design. You can find a bit of Nicola’s musings on bebetween on WordPress.

LeAnne Petherick – University of British Columbia

Dr. LeAnne Petherick’s areas of special interest revolve around the meaning of production in physical education and health education, including curriculum design, delivery, and uptake. Her research focuses on the development and translation of ideas about the body, children and youth, teachers and health professionals, and contemporary health culture. Furthermore, she examines the embodied experiences associated with these ideas as they are mobilized in educational contexts. Within this area of special interest, her research centres around two primary themes: 1) social justice into physical and health education; 2) community-based Indigenous physical cultures (i.e., sport, physical activity, land-based activities) and place-based learning.

Jerod Quinn – Wake Forest University

Jerod Quinn is an instructional designer at Wake Forest University in the Office of Online Education. He’s been an ID for well over a decade helping instructors create online classes they are excited to teach and that learners are excited to take. He has a Master’s Degree in Learning Systems Design and Development and is a dissertation away from a PhD in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Quantitative Measurement from the University of Missouri. His work bubbles out of the tension of holding the pragmatic (what can actually be done) in one hand while holding the ideal (what should be done) in the other. His first book, The Learner Centered Instructional Designer, came out in 2021 through Stylus Publishing. You can find him tweeting about teaching, learning, instructional design, guitars, and nature at @jerodq.

Johanna Sam  – University of British Columbia

Hunelhyad? Sid Dr. Johanna Sam sets’edinh. Sid Tŝilhqot’in xaghiyah. Sid Musqueam nen ŝidah as. My name is Dr. Johanna Sam. She is a proud citizen of Tŝilhqot’in Nation. She lives and works on the traditional lands of the Musqueam People. She is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. Realizing the importance of a strength-based approach, she is involved in creating youth-friendly educational and mental health resources. Her research explores the relationships among cyber-aggression, resiliency, academic achievement, and wellness. Her research and teaching not only utilizes digital technology, but approaches those digital tools from Indigenous perspectives.

Natalie Shaw – NHL Stenden University of Applied Science

Natalie enthusiastically works as a teacher educator after a career in international education, both in a classroom teacher and in a leadership role. She currently teaches on the ITEps course, a unique B.Ed. programme located on a small campus in Meppel, the Netherlands. At ITEps, student-teachers are trained specifically for international education, with a big focus on teaching in diverse classrooms and exploring global citizenship education. Natalie completed a university degree in Special Needs Education from Cologne University and went on to obtain a PGCE in Primary teaching with Early Childhood focus at Liverpool John Moores university. At the same time, she ventured to Asia regularly, volunteering in community-based rehabilitation in Thailand and an outreach school for young children in India. After teaching positions in China and Cambodia, Natalie returned to Germany to teach in Berlin and completed both a Masters degree in Children’s Rights and Childhood Studies (at Freie Universität Berlin) as well as a related PhD (at the University of Kassel). Her educational adventure continued when making the transition into teacher education, and she has not looked back since. At ITEps, she teaches Early Childhood Education, Educational Studies, and Research. In her free time Natalie can be found doing diy on her houseboat, sewing, crocheting, painting or crafting, and doing sports of all kinds.

Jesse Stommel – University of Denver

Jesse Stommel is currently a faculty member in the Writing Program at University of Denver. He is also co-founder of Hybrid Pedagogy: the journal of critical digital pedagogy and Digital Pedagogy Lab (2015-2021). He has a PhD from University of Colorado Boulder. He is co-author of An Urgency of Teachers: the Work of Critical Digital Pedagogy.

Jesse is a documentary filmmaker and teaches courses about pedagogy, film, digital studies, and composition. Jesse experiments relentlessly with learning interfaces, both digital and analog, and his research focuses on higher education pedagogy, critical digital pedagogy, and assessment. He’s got a rascal pup, Emily, a clever cat, Loki, and a badass daughter, Hazel. He’s online at jessestommel.com and on Twitter @Jessifer.

Katrina Wehr – Pennsylvania State University

Katrina Wehr is a U.S.-based learning experience designer currently working for WGU Labs and wrapping up a Ph.D. in Learning, Design, and Technology at Penn State University after attaining her M.Ed. in instructional technology from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 2013. Her experience serving the educational needs of leaners spans both K-12 and higher education. A beneficiary of online learning herself, Katrina is inspired by the achievements of learners who otherwise could not access higher education without flexible distance learning opportunities. Lately, her professional priorities are focused on providing individual contributors in education settings with knowledge and tools to take actionable changes within their organizations towards ethical, justice-oriented learning design. She spends her personal time walking her dogs, riding her bike, and spending time with family. Katrina respectfully acknowledges she is situated on Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Unami Lenape.