Facing Students' Engagement Strategies

President of the Spanish University Publishers' Association (UNE) and the Spanish E-Learning Providers’ Association (APeL).

Chair Executive Officer of Oberta UOC Publishing, in the last years he has been both  CEO of Editorial UOC and Director of the Information and Communications Sciences Department at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC).

Doctor in Journalism from the Universitat Ramon Llull, Master’s degree in Information Science by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Degree in Administration and Business Management by IESE-Universidad de Navarra.

He has authored numerous publications on Communication, the main ones being Express Rhetoric (Retórica Exprés), Sexy Writing (Escritura sexy)and Zombie journalism in the age of the participative audiences (Periodismo zombi en la era de las audiencias participativas).

He appears regularly as an expert in Communication in the media in Catalonia (TV3, Catalunya Ràdio, RAC 1, SER, BTV) and the rest of Spain (Cuatro, RNE, SER).

Hani is a Business Strategist and Entrepreneur with over 20 years of international experience. Taking on different roles in the educational and non-profit sector, in the UAE, Lebanon and the UK, he has specialised in taking new products and brands to markets domestically, regionally and globally. He has worked in marketing, product development, strategic partnerships, channel management and ecommerce for renowned organisations such as The British Council, Pearson and learndirect.

Most recently, Hani has developed a revolutionary way for people to learn languages, Velawoods English a truly comprehensive self-study English course. The unique Velawoods vision means that language learners can rely on high quality, motivating content. It uses gaming principles and personal-attachment methods which learners will find engaging and addictive.

Links

http://www.velawoodsenglish.com

Guadarrama has 18 years’ experience in e-Learning. He completed his MA Educational Technology at Concordia University, Canada. He has collaborated with Mexican and Canadian universities. He specializes in online open education, learning design, evaluation, self-paced learning, curriculum/course mapping, quality assurance and educational development. He has a vast experience in program and course design/review, and the assessment of program-level learning outcomes. His professional experience has taken place in f-t-f, blended and online education in traditional learning objectives and learning-outcomes education.  Currently, he is a learning designer at Athabasca University, where he assists professors in designing and evaluating online courses. Research interests involve e-Learning; the use of technology for e-learning; the enrichment of learning scenarios with cooperative learning in online self-paced courses; the integration of critical thinking and information literacy skills into the curriculum; open educational resources; and the development of learning models around learning design.  

Links

http://www.athabascau.ca/

Teri Shaffer Yamada received a master’s degree in Southeast Asian languages and literatures in 1975 and a doctorate in Buddhist Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1985. She has studied seven Asian languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Khmer, and lived in Japan for six years. In 2002 she organized the Nou Hach Literary Association (www.nouhachjournal.net) to promote the development of literacy and modern literature in Cambodia. This NGO publishes the only literary journal in Cambodia, sponsors yearly literary awards, and promotes writers workshops in Cambodia. Currently she is the Chair of the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at CSU Long Beach. Her research interests include modernity and Southeast Asian literature, development and sustainability in Cambodia. Her publications include the compilation Virtual Lotus: Modern Fiction of Southeast Asia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), Modern Short Fiction of Southeast Asia: A Literary History (Ann Arbor: Association for Asian Studies, 2009), and ‘Just a Human Being’ and Other Tales from Contemporary Cambodia (Nou Hach Literary Association: Translation Series, No 1, Charleston S.C., 2013). She has written numerous articles on modern Southeast Asian literature and political culture, modern Cambodian literature and culture, and the Cambodian diaspora. 

Prof. Yamada developed the course “Asian Eats” as an introduction to Asia through the comparative exploration of Asian foodways. It introduces students to the geography of Asia, and the importance of environment (climate and soil quality) on the production of specific types of food and sustainability; the aesthetics of presentation and food as a form of social communication. Through this course, students are introduced the concepts of diffusion, transculturation, globalization, and sustainability using  rice, tea, and curry as examples. To promote the study of Asia among Generation Y, she has developed this course in three different modalities: flipped, active learning, and online. Each develops different skill sets for students beyond the acquisition of subject content cultures.

Links

http://www.csulb.edu/~yamadaty/

Twitter

BBA (Finance and Accounting)

MBA (International General Management)

Maurice Brown was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica where he completed most of his formal education.  He moved to the Netherlands in 1994 and completed his first degree, subsequently completing a Master’s Degree.

Interested in both sciences and business at an early age. Whilst at High School his career ambitions were focussed on dentistry.  However, his love of aviation continued and he took a more business oriented approach to his education, and later became a consultant to the aviation industry. Further roles in the field of Finance followed at a number of leading multinational companies.

Maurice attended London International Youth Science Forum as a participant in 1986 and continues to try to keep abreast of trends in scientific and technological advancements and achievements.

Currently he is a Senior lecturer in Finance and Business Strategy at the HU/University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, in the Netherlands. Together with a small group of colleagues, are looking at ways to modernize their current curriculum and how to  bridge the gap between student education and needs of their future industry employers.

Links

Twitter

Dr Maggy Beukes-Amiss is a Namibian with over 17 years experience in teaching ICT related subjects at the University of Namibia, within the Department of Information and Communication Studies. She has a PhD in Computer-integrated Education (CiE) through the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She served as Head of Department (2005-2007), and again for another three years (2012-2014). Currently she is the Director of the newly established Centre for eLearning and Interactive Multimedia at the University of Namibia.

She is particularly passionate about eLearning capacity-building activities through the use of open source software packages and research focusing on eLearning technologies and activities. She is a member of the eLearning Committee of the University of Namibia and used to serve on the Namibian Open Learning Network Trust (NOLNet) eLearning Committee as Coordinator of eLearning activities within the entire country for over seven years, until 2011. She has been involved in a number of eLearning capacity-building activities in Namibia and various countries in Africa on behalf of NOLNet, GIZ and GESCI.

She served as Chairperson of the eLearning Africa 2013 Local Organising Committee and was also a reviewer of conference papers for eLearning Africa, on behalf of ICWE GmbH, Germany, 2011-2015. She is a certified ICDL trainer (2007) and an Expert of New Learning Technologies (2005) through TeleAkademia of Furtwagen, Germany.

She has served as an ICT Steering Committee member of the ICT Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education in Namibia since 2005 and, in addition, has been the Deputy Chairperson of the ICT Steering Committee since 2012. She was a contributor of the national ICT Policy and implementation plan, Tech NA!. She was a Commissioner and then Chairperson of the Board, of the regulator Namibian Communications Commission (NCC), 2006-2011. She was also appointed as the country’s eminent e-Content expert through the World Summit Award (WSA), 2006 -2015. She served as a Technical Quality Assurance Committee (TeQAC) member for the African leaders in ICT (ALICT) blended learning programme of GESCI, as well as the tutor-coordinator (training and coaching) e-tutors of the ALICT programme, 2011-2014. Another highlight in her career path is that she has recently been appointed as the Chairperson of the Telecom Namibia Board.

Links

http://www.unam.na/faculties/humanities…