About the authors
Keith Heggart is the academic lead for the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design at UTS. He designed and developed this brand-new and innovative course that combines microcredentials and work-integrated learning in order to meet the needs of a diverse and busy student body. This course was recognised for its approach internationally, receiving the Learning Innovation Award from AECT in 2022. It has also received a UTS Teaching and Learning Citation. Keith’s research interests lie at the intersection of social justice and learning design. He has won numerous awards for his research, including a Best Publication for his paper on Learning Design for Social Justice from the Culture, Learning and Technology SIG in AECT, and the Early Career Researcher award from ASCILITE in 2021. In 2022, Keith won an ASCILITE/D2L grant to investigate learning design and microcredentials. Keith has more than 20 publications to his name, including two books. Before becoming an academic, Keith worked as a learning designer and developer in three different universities, and also for not-for-profit organisations. Keith is also an Apple Distinguished Educator.
Mais Fatayer is an educational technology specialist, learning designer and early career researcher. She has been working in higher education since 2008, during which she worked in several capacities at higher educational institutions including the Open University and Western Sydney University. At the time of publishing this book, she was the Learner Experience Design Manager at University of Technology Sydney (UTS).
Mais specialises in designing and co-designing engaging learning materials, implementing open learning strategies and resources, leading transformative learning projects, and creating award-winning technology-enhanced learning environments. She received UTS Vice Chancellor’s Professional Staff Excellence Awards for High Performing Professional Staff in 2023 in recognition of her achievement to the work of open education at UTS. She was also awarded Blackboard 2018 Catalyst Awards for Australia and New Zealand in the Student Success category. Mais received her PhD from the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics in 2016 from the University of Western Sydney. Her thesis is titled ‘Towards a sustainable OER model: Tapping into the cognitive surplus of student-generated content’.
Camille Dickson-Deane is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. She is a Fulbright and Organization of American States (OAS) scholar with her research focusing on pedagogical usability, individual differences and contextualised online learning designs. Camille serves on two Q1 editorial boards – Educational Technology Research and Development and Internet and Higher Education – along with serving as an advisor for the open science publishing project EdTechnica and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Computing in Higher Education. She is also an Australian representative on the EDUCAUSE Horizon Report panel of experts, having served since 2021.
Puvaneswari P Arumugam (Puva) is a third space academic (Lecturer, Learning Futures) at Deakin University’s Faculty of Business and Law Learning Innovations team. Her research interests include studying the perceptions and identity issues relating to third space academics/professionals together with stakeholder perspectives of digital literacy. Puva is also a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
In her current role, Puva leads the academic development of programmatic course redevelopment across the faculty, ensuring that the courses are aligned and fit for integrated teaching and learning. At Deakin, Puva has also been a valued team member over the past six years, providing stakeholder and SoTL input to several university-wide projects such as CloudFirst project, FutureLearn MOOC/ Microcredentials and Deakin Design Principles. Apart from being an Advance Higher Education Fellowship Mentor and Assessor at Deakin, she has also been a mentor at ASCILITE Community Mentorship Program for the past four years, where she has presented conference papers and won an award for a poster she co-created with her mentee. She is an Executive Committee (Communication) member for Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) at the Victoria Branch. Puva co-published a book (with a publication grant from Singapore National Heritage Board) in 2017 depicting the cultural identity of an Indian minority group in Singapore. Her recent publications include an ASCILITE Conference paper in 2019 and being a co-author on ASCILITE’s Horizon Report 2022. Puva is currently working on an autoethnographic research project conducted by herself and two colleagues studying the assumptions that third space academics bring to their roles and how these assumptions impact the work that they do.
Katrina Thorpe (Worimi) is the Academic Lead at Nura Gili: Centre for Indigenous Programs at the University of New South Wales. At the time of writing this book, Katrina was a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges and School of International Studies and Education, UTS. She has over two decades experience teaching Indigenous Studies within the fields of education, social work, nursing, health and community development. Katrina’s teaching and research focuses on developing culturally responsive pedagogies that facilitate connections between students and Aboriginal people, communities and Country. Katrina has received several teaching awards including the Faculty of Education and Social Work’s Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Sydney, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences – University of Sydney, Unit of Study Commendation for teaching KOCR2013 Indigenous Health and Communities and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences – UTS, Learning and Teaching Award for Integration of Indigenous Professional Capabilities into Curriculum. Her co-authored paper ‘Learning from Country to conceptualise what an Aboriginal curriculum narrative might look like in education’ received the Australian Curriculum Studies Association’s 2023 Colin Marsh Award for the best journal article.
Susan Page is a national teaching award-winning Aboriginal educator and Indigenous higher education specialist who is currently the Director of Indigenous Learning and Teaching at Western Sydney University. Susan’s research focuses on Indigenous Australian experiences of learning and academic work in higher education and student learning in Indigenous Studies. She has collaborated on multiple competitive research grants and is well published in Indigenous Higher Education. Susan has held several leadership positions including Associate Dean (Indigenous Leadership and Engagement), Centre Director and Head of the Department, and she is currently an appointed Indigenous representative for the Universities Australia Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Committee.
Shaun Bell is a learning designer at UTS’ Postgraduate Learning Design unit, working in partnership with experts to co-design innovative digital learning. They hold a PhD in Literature from UNSW and have published reviews and award-winning essays on literary culture and the teaching of English in JASAL, Southerly and TESOL Quarterly. Shaun has taught in the English Program at UNSW and has several years of experience designing learning materials for eLearning and distance education.
John Vulic is an academic for the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design at UTS. Prior to this role, John was a Senior Learning Designer at UTS. In this role he managed a team of learning designers who designed and developed a suite of online and blended learning products at UTS. These included microcredentials, short courses, tasters, enterprise learning and traditional enrolled, and online program management (OPM) courses. John was a co-recipient of the AECT Learner Engagement Division’s 2022 Excellence in Innovation Award for the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design Program at UTS. John has over 25 years’ experience in various education, teaching and training and development roles. These roles have encompassed positions across tertiary, government and private sectors. As an early career educational researcher (H index of 2), John’s PhD focused on a comparison of learning designs that promote learning transfer.
As a researcher, John has been involved in an international 21st Century Partnership for STEM Education project titled Mathematical Thinkers Like Me (MLM). This project seeks to support Black, Latinx, and low-income students in the United States with an online collaborative problem-solving and storytelling context that helps develop their identity and strength as mathematical thinkers.
Nhung Nguyen is a highly respected and passionate educator with over 19 years of experience in learning design, digital technologies in education, and science education. She is a Senior Lecturer in Learning and Teaching at the University of Tasmania. Previously, she worked as a Senior Lecturer and Learning and Teaching Consultant at Auckland University of Technology – Learning Transformation LAB (New Zealand), where she plays a key role in helping to transform the way that students learn and engage with education. Throughout her career, Nhung has been committed to creating learning experiences that are inclusive and responsive to the needs of diverse learners. She has received awards at conferences, been invited as a keynote speaker and given speeches at conferences and universities.
Nhung has published more than 25 titles, one of which has 4,582 accesses and was the most highly accessed article published in Asia-Pacific Science Education at the time Springer ranked it.
Katie Duncan is an advocate for inclusivity in higher education. She likes finding practical and sustainable ways to help academics make their subjects accessible for all students, including those with disabilities and access requirements, such as using assistive technology like screen readers.
In 2021, she established the Inclusive Practices team in the LX.lab (Learner Experience Lab) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). During her leadership, the team has won two Accessibility in Action Award from the Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training (ADCET). The first award for their inclusive practice review – a framework for assessing how learning and teaching tools can be used in accessible ways. The second for their collaborative support for Subject Coordinators implementing complex access requirement for a student to ensure they have an inclusive experience. The team has also partnered with ADCET to adapt their own accessibility resources for the Australian and New Zealand tertiary sector.
Katie brings the student voice into the work that she does, by advocating for and implementing paid opportunities for co-design. Examples of this include the Students Explain Digital Accessibility video series, where five UTS students draw on their lived experiences of disability to explain why academics need accessibility for their subjects. Most recently, Katie has led SLAC (Student Learning Advisory Committee) with the UTS Accessibility Services, a group of 14 students in paid roles who meet once a month to provide insights into improving the student experience through the lens of accessibility – named by students as a way of reclaiming the idea students who require adjustments are “slackers”.
Rhiannon Hall writes and edits content for LX at UTS, the digital home of the University of Technology Sydney’s Education Portfolio. Rhiannon works across content on all aspects of learning and teaching, and has a particular interest in accessibility, social equity and collaborating with students. She is passionate about educating the learning and teaching community on accessible practices, and has co-facilitated a number of projects working with students as partners. Rhiannon has a Bachelor of Communication from the University of Newcastle and a Master of Cultural Studies from the University of Sydney.
Bruna Contro Pretero. Being queer and disabled, Bruna has devoted her life to making a positive impact on society. In terms of education, she has undertaken extensive studies in her field, achieving Bachelor’s degrees in Sciences and Teaching, as well as in Translation and Interpreting Services with a specialisation in English and Portuguese. She later focused on education, diversity and accessibility studies, earning a range of postgraduate diplomas in Higher Education Learning and Teaching, Inclusive Learning and Teaching Practices, and Education Psychology, as well as gaining certification in Web Accessibility Compliance.
Over the last 15 years, Bruna has worked in various educational settings, from primary to tertiary levels, and has held a variety of roles including education specialist, education designer/technologist and learning technologist. At the time of writing this book, she was employed as a Digital Accessibility Specialist at the Australian National University.
Bruna’s areas of expertise include Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL), Critical Pedagogy, Diversity and Inclusion, Digital Accessibility, and Care and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy. As a lifelong learner, she firmly believes that education has the power to transform people and enable them to drive positive change in society.
