Events

Flower Darby celebrates and promotes effective teaching in all modalities to advance equitable learning outcomes for all students. She's an Associate Director of the Teaching for Learning Center at the University of Missouri. Prior to that, she held roles such as Assistant Dean of Online and Innovative Pedagogies and Director of Teaching for Student Success. These roles have allowed her to build on her experience teaching in person and online for over 28 years in a range of subjects including English, Technology, Education, Leadership, Dance, and Pilates.

With more than 20 years in the digital asset management industry, Neal is known for his leadership and ability to translate strategic, organisational and business goals into technology solutions that work.

He is a respected member of the media, entertainment, and technology industries, and is recognised internationally for his innovative methods of identifying and unblocking digital supply chain obstacles, across all markets. 

Rob has worked in data aggregation and information retrieval for over 20 years.

He is the product manager and technical architect for Knowledge Integration’s CIIM product, which provides data services for organisations including the British Museum, the National Archives (UK), the British Library, the National Gallery (UK) and many more.

Dr. Jennifer Qian is an Associate Professor of Learning Analytics and Educational Technology at Louisiana State University. She is the program coordinator for the Master’s and Graduate Certificate in Educational Technology in the School of Education. Dr. Qian has an extensive career in higher education spanning various institutions, including Northeastern University and Dartmouth College. Dr.

Bethany Simunich is Vice-President of Innovation & Research at Quality Matters, an educational non-profit dedicated to quality online learning at all levels of education. In this role, Dr. Simunich leads efforts to help institutions, faculty, and staff make data-driven, research-based decisions to implement online quality assurance and promote online student success. In her over twenty years in higher education, she has held faculty, instructional design, research-focused, and online learning administration roles at several U.S. HEIs.

Richard Garrett is Chief Research Officer at Eduventures, a higher education market research and consulting firm (part of Encoura). Richard has tracked the online higher education market since the 1990s, based both in the United Kingdom and United States. He has worked with hundreds of colleges and universities to help shape their online strategies and programming. Richard has also worked at Tribal Group, University of Surrey, and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (UK).

Eric Fredericksen helps lead the exploration of online learning initiatives across the University. He has held similar positions at Cornell University and the SUNY System. For almost three decades he has been active at the national level with organizations such as OLC/Sloan-C and EDUCAUSE. Dr Fredericksen is also a professor at the University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education.

Thomas Cavanagh, PhD, is Vice Provost for Digital Learning at the University of Central Florida. In this role, he oversees the distance learning strategy, policies, and practices of one of the nation’s largest universities. A national leader in digital education and academic innovation, he has been recognized with numerous awards from organizations such as the Online Learning Consortium, the United States Distance Learning Association, 1EdTech, and the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technology. He is active in the higher education community and serves on several national boards.