Panel Presentation ENG216
Learner-centric (Language) Learning
These presentations provide insight into the engaging portals and platforms available for blended, autonomous and personalised (language) learning. Join to hear about their impact on teachers and students and find out what to look out for when investing in adaptive-learning technologies.
Afif Rustom
VitalSource, Germany
Afif Rustom is an international business development professional, whose career has been focused on transforming content providers and institutions to digital through various tools and methodologies enhancing the overall outcomes and learning experience. He works closely with key stakeholders in ministries of education, consortiums, institutions and content providers to enable learners, instructors and management to make a systematic transformation to digital and scale the solutions. In such capacity he has held various roles such as Senior Regional Manager for Europe at McGraw-Hill Education based in Frankfurt and Regional manager for the Gulf region at McGraw-Hill Education based in Dubai.
His experience has been extensive across more than 50 countries in building and leading teams to tackle educational solutions and implement digital transformation with successful results based on usage, collaborative interaction, and achieving learning outcomes. He is currently leading the Business Development team for Europe, Middle East and Africa at VitalSource Technologies. He is based in Frankfurt, working closely with various Higher Education and K12 Institutions, regional partners, publishers, consortiums and ministries of education.
Key Interests: technology, digital education, business intelligence, innovation, learning science, transformational management and professional development.
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Liisa Wallenius
Senior Lecturer, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Finland
Senior Lecturer in Nordic studies, communication, design sprint and Coordinator of work placement.
Her strengths are in communication and intercultural competence, inquiry and digital learning. She believes in student empowerment and content-integrated learning.
Currently she is involved with development projects on digitalisation of learning in higher education, especially that of language learning and enhancing live projects and inquiry learning as well as Google Educator certification.
In addition, coaching and peer coaching are among her focus areas. She enjoys team teaching and collaboration. She has worked within education, in higher education or corporate training all her career.
She takes an active interest in the development of education.
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Taija Votkin
Lecturer, Aalto University, Finland
Lecturer in Swedish at the language center of Aalto University.
Her strengths include intercultural communication, creating a good group dynamic, and implementing an innovative approach to language learning. She believes in bringing out the best in her students and encouraging them to reach their full potential. She is a keen advocate for task-based learning and the flipped classroom method.
During the past few years she has participated in several projects regarding learning portals and learning in 360 environments. She has also worked on a project regarding digital portfolios for teachers.
Assessment is another area of interest for her, and she has been using videos and e-exams as alternative assessment methods to traditional exams.
Henrik Køhler Simonsen
Director of Resources & Projects, SmartLearning, Denmark
Henrik Køhler Simonsen is PhD, MA, MBA and Director of Resources & Projects at Smartlearning, Denmark.
He is also external lecturer at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark and is conducting cross-disciplinary research in corporate information science, data access, learning transfer and business models in education.
Henrik Køhler Simonsen offers consultancy services on digital innovation, digital business development and digital education to the Danish educational sector. Come visit me at the session "The voice of new learning: conversational interfaces, language, chatbots" where I will present a preliminary version of our model for comparing three different Adaptive Learning Technologies.
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Moderator
Christel Schneider
Managing Director, CSiTrain and University of Central Lancashire, Germany
Christel Schneider is currently working as a senior research assistant and project coordinator for the EU funded GUINEVERE Project for the University of Central Lancashire, UK. As part of her project work, Christel has been involved in teaching and learning in virtual worlds and developed her skills in machinimatography. She has over fifteen years’ experience in online teacher training and completed an MA in Virtual Education at the University of the West of England (UK). Christel also designed, set up and delivered online teacher training for Cornelsen Publishing and various other institutions. From 2006 until 2012 she was EU project manager and director of the international language association ICC. Before this, she worked as head of the language department for the German adult education association in Schleswig Holstein, Germany, and taught didactics and methodology at Hamburg University, Dept. of Education, Germany. In 2013 Christel founded CSITrain, where she still works as managing director.