Supporting, Developing and Certifying Online Teaching Excellence

Dr. Carlos Morales is founding President of TCC Connect Campus, the largest and fastest growing of the six campuses that are part of Tarrant County College District, which delivers eLearning and Weekend College programs to non-traditional students. He is responsible for the educational endeavors of more than 20,000 students served by 500+ faculty.

Dr. Morales is an instructional technology scholar, a visionary and dynamic leader with experience at undergraduate, graduate, public and private institutions of higher education and an educator, presenter, and author. His experience spans more than 20 years as a faculty member of Biology and Science Education in the classroom and online. He has held progressive administrative roles as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Ana G. Méndez University System-Virtual Campus; Executive Director of Academic Technologies at Lock Haven University and Instructional Designer at New Jersey City University.

Carlos is the author of internationally peer-reviewed academic articles, book chapters and has conducted more than 70 refereed conference presentations. Throughout his career, Dr. Morales has used technology to improve teaching and learning. He is enthusiastic about incorporating technology advancements that engage students in the learning process and that help faculty to enhance teaching methods. He has accomplished this through the development of instructional technology training sessions, designing and implementing technology-enriched classrooms and the development of fully online college degrees.  He is a sought out expert and leader in higher education innovation; experienced creating converged learning environments (online, hybrid and web-assisted) and as well as adult and accelerated learning opportunities. Dr. Morales serves on a number of boards at the regional and national level in the United States and is actively engaged as a peer reviewer on editorial boards for academic journals in the United States, Puerto Rico, Latin America and the European Union.

Dr. Morales graduated from the Inter American University of Puerto Rico, with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biology and Science Education, and received his doctorate, from Capella University in Instructional Design for Online Learning. He was a Frye Fellow in 2009 and in 2012, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities named him a Millennium Leadership Fellow.

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Cristine Gusmão is an associate professor at Federal University of Pernambuco.

She is a permanent member of the Postgraduate Program in Biomedical Engineering – UFPE. She coordinates the Research Group – SABER – Educational and Social Technologies and UNA-SUS (Open University of Unique System of Health) at UFPE. She has a Scholarship for Productivity and Technological Development and Innovative Extension - Level 2 (CNPq - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development).

She has obtained her PhD in Project Management in Computer Sciences at the Federal University of Pernambuco, in 2007. Her research interests are concentrated in the areas of Learning Analytics and Knowledge Intensive Processes; Educational and Social Technologies in Higher Education; Mobile Health and Health Information Systems; Health Educational and Software Engineering.

Paul Bacsich is the Founder and Managing Director of Matic Media Ltd, a consultancy in the UK active in online learning since 1996. He is also Professor of Practice for the University of West Indies Open Campus, which is headquartered in Barbados.

In addition he consults for the SeroHE division of Sero Consulting Ltd as a Senior Associate: he was a member of the Sero team who recently reviewed Learning Technology Support at the University of Oxford, and currently he is leading a 12-month project at Sero to develop an accredited vocational short online course to teach teachers to teach online for Wey Education (who run Interhigh Virtual School and other similar entities).

He is also Visiting Professor for University of Derby Online Learning (UDOL) in the UK.

He has a long-standing interest in Open Education via a large EU project (POERUP) and several EU/European Parliament studies: in particular he is Co-Coordinator of the Open Education Working Group and an Ambassador for the global advocacy of OER and a member of the OER Advocacy Committee of ICDE.  He was a co-author for the JRC 2017 report “Policy Approaches to Open Education in 28 Member States”.

His interests in leadership in e-learning were developed during the Erasmus+ D-TRANSFORM project 2014-17, which drew on and continued his work over 20 years on management of open and distance learning.

In addition to his public work he consults for a number of international, government, commercial, venture fund and university clients on market/competitor/pricing research, policy, education funding models and retention strategies. He has recently finalised a report on credit recognition and transfer for online masters' programmes, for a university client in Canada.

In 2015-16 Paul chaired the review panel for the Vision and Strategy Appraisal of the UK Open University Library, where he interviewed over 70 staff and students and carried out substantial comparative and policy research. He also chaired the E-learning review panel for Uppsala University, with three days of intensive meetings and presentations, and spent four months chairing a task force for the National Forum for Learning and Teaching in Ireland to prepare a scoping document on infrastructure issues related to online learning.

Some of his recent thinking can be found in his UNESCO policy brief on "Alternative Models of Education Delivery" and in a paper for the "Open Education 2030" higher education workshop run by the EU. He remains very interested in "Multiversity" models and competence-based provision, based on his earlier studies on "Time and e-learning", developed from a speech given in Austria, a country with which he has increasing links.

He is a co-founder of MultEversity, a start-up in online/blended post-secondary education which aims in due course to be an accredited university and higher vocational provider. He also has had involvement in other early-stage online providers over the last six years and has done several studies of them.

In the university phase of his career he was a researcher at Oxford University, had many roles over 25 years at the UK Open University, and was for seven years Professor of Telematics at Sheffield Hallam University and then a Director at the UK e-University. He was also Visiting Professor at Middlesex University and Advisor to the Rector of the Arab Open University.

He has knowledge of and/or experience in higher education in many developed countries.

Links

http://www.serohe.co.uk/team/professor-paul-bacsich/

https://www.derby.ac.uk/online/academics/professor-paul-bacsich

https://independent.academia.edu/PaulBacsich

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bacsich/

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