Lars Uhlin
Course organiser, facilitator
 

Lars Uhlin works as an Educational Developer at Karolinska Institutet and Linköping university as well as Mälardalen university. He has a background in Nursing and has long experience of Health Care Education and Problem-based learning (PBL). For the last 20 years he has worked with educational development in different settings both on the national and international arena. He is also coordinating a national/nordic network for PBL and is a member of steering group for the swedish network for Information Technology in Higher Education (ITHU). Some of Lars’ main focus areas are professional development and educational design within a framework of problem based-, interprofessional- and online learning.

Maria Kvarnström
Maria Kvarnström
Course organiser, facilitator
 

Maria Kvarnström works as educational developer at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. She has a background as Biomedical Laboratory Scientist and research in the medical field before working full time with education. Maria has an interest for online learning and how to manage the challenges for facilitating learners when locating education to an open online learning environment. Further she has a strong interest for PBL, started already when being a student at The Faculty of Health Sciences at Linköping University, and is very interested in investigating how to work with PBL online.

Lotta Åbjörnsson
Course organiser, facilitator
 

Lotta Åbjörnsson works as an educational developer at the Division for Higher Education Development (AHU) at Lund University, Sweden. With a background in Physiotherapy and a Diploma in Physiotherapy Education she has worked as a teacher mainly in Physiotherapy programmes employing Problem Based Learning (PBL) as their method of instruction. Her keen interest in online learning and the digital world is of a rather recent date and it is with a fair bit of reluctance she has been able to convince herself of the usefulness and discover the inherent joys hiding in the nooks and crannies of digital tools and social media.

Alastair Creelman
Alastair Creelman
Course organiser, facilitator
 

Alastair Creelman is an e-learning specialist at the Linnaeus University library in Kalmar. He is particularly interested in the opportunities that technology offers to open up education to all. He monitors developments and trends in educational technology and disseminates his findings through his blogs, Twitter and other social media as well as in published articles and conference contributions. He has taught in most areas of education (school, adult education, corporate training and university) and is today active in several national and international networks and organisations as well as Nordic and EU projects.

Jörg Pareigis
Course organiser, facilitator
 

Jörg Pareigis is Assistant Professor in Business Administration and researcher at CTF, Service Research Center at Karlstad University, Sweden. Besides his research, Jörg is very involved in teaching at the Karlstad Business School, where he is responsible for the course Marketing Strategies and Understanding Customer Experience. In addition to his role as program manager of the International Business program, he leads the externally funded WISR16 and WISR17 course development projects. The purpose of the projects is to develop open online graduate courses for professionals in the private and public sector based on strategically important research centres at Karlstad University, where he is also working as educational developer.

Filip Levälahti
Facilitator
 

Filip Levälahti works as an e-learning coordinator at Arcada, University of applied sciences in Helsinki, Finland. His job is to support and develop the teachers’ competences in online and blended teaching and to coordinate the pedagogical infrastructure in the campus. Filip also teach a course in digital literacies for all new students at the university. He follows the expression “good online pedagogy begins with good pedagogy, period” (Paul Creasman) and is eager to find out how good pedagogy can be applied with modern technology.

Elaine Sjögren
Facilitator
 

Elaine Sjögren works as an educational developer and teaches in Higher Education and Problem Based Learning for university teachers at Linköping University. She also teaches Medical Education for master students at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Linköping University. The last 18 years she has taught students with PBL as a method and approach, but not previously online. Elaine is also involved in some development and research projects with focus on reflections in portfolio for students, critical friends and equal opportunities aspects in course and program syllabuses. Further, at national level, she assesses teaching portfolios, when someone is recruited to or promoted for an employment at universities in Sweden.

Lotta Fröjdfeldt
Facilitator
 

Lotta Fröjdfeldt is an academic developer at Mälardalen University (MDH), Eskilstuna, Sweden. She focuses on the pedagogical aspects of ICT in Higher Education. Lotta is experienced both as a system developer, 15 years, and as teacher, 7 years, and has worked with academic development since 2015. She is interested in, and is now studying for a masters degree in online teaching and learning in higher education. Lotta was a participant in ONL172 and will now facilitate, but also coach and implement this course at MDH.

Anne Whaits
Facilitator
 

Anne Whaits joined the executive team at Educor in May 2018 as Chief Academic Officer after having spent most of 2017 with Academic Partnerships – an American Online Programme Manager (OPM) Business in partnership with public universities in South Africa to take a portfolio of their degree programmes 100% online. Having facilitated several iterations of ONL before, Anne’ s current action research interests include new learning ecosystems with particular interest in developing online facilitation skills amongst academics and digital literacies amongst students. Educor has three distance education brands and five contact delivery brands across South Africa with the number of blended and online offerings growing.

Sinéad Whitty
Facilitator
 

Sinéad Whitty is Director of Learning at Faculty of Capacity Development, Ireland. Previously, she was Pedagogy Coordinator at the Department of Medicine in Karolinska Institutet, where she was responsible for the design, development and delivery of online, post-graduate courses. Sinéad has twenty years’ experience teaching face to face, online and blended. She is an advocate for technology that supports good teaching and learning practices. Sinéad may be addicted to ONL, having participated in five previous iterations. She is delighted to faciliate on ONL191.

Kiruthika Ragupathi
Facilitator
 

Kiruthika Ragupathi is an academic developer with the Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning (CDTL) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). She has a background in Engineering and has worked with academic development since 1997.  Her research interests are in analyzing pedagogical issues surrounding the integration of educational technologies into teaching and learning; understanding the learning processes and outcomes for learners engaged in technology-supported tasks; and in tracking and supporting learning in interactive learning environments. Her current research focuses on using student evaluation of teaching to enhance teaching practices and policies; in optimizing instructor interventions in online discussion forums to enhance the student learning experience; and also in studying the impact of gradeless learning on student motivation. Kiruthika took the ONL171 journey, co-facilitated on ONL172 and ONL181, and will now facilitate a group in ONL191.

Tore Nilsson,
Facilitator
 

Tore Nilsson is a senior lecturer in language education, Stockholm University. With a background in English linguistics he now works with foreign language teacher education, in-service training of language teachers and research in language education with a special interest in pre-service teacher cognition and professional devlopment. He has a keen interest in pedagogical development issues. In 2017 he co-ordinated a year-long project at his department with a focus on furthering digital literacy and the use of digital tools in language teacher education. During 2018 he is the pedagogical facilitator for the implementation of a new LMS at his department. Tore participated in ONL171, was a co-facilitator for ONL181and is now returning as a facilitator for ONL191.

Alan Soong
Facilitator
 

Alan Soong is an Associate Director (Learning Design and Research) at the Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning, National University of Singapore. He has been working in the area of academic development and the use of ICT for teaching and learning in higher education since 2002. Alan’s research interests include academic development and blended learning in higher education. He has also been actively serving as a member of the executive committee of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) since 2012. Alan participated in ONL171, co-facilitated ONL172 and ONL181, and will now facilitate in ONL191.

sonja
Sonja Sharp
Facilitator
 

Sonja Sharp has been with Varsity College (an educational brand of The Independent Institute of Education, the largest private provider of higher education in South Africa) for the past sixteen years. During that time she has developed her interests in teaching and learning, specifically with a focus on educational technology and online mediation. Currently Sonja’s position within Varsity College is that of Educational Technologist, where she supports the adoption of blended learning, online mediation, the institutional LMS, and supports the national drives of transformative teaching and learning strategies across a national footprint of eight higher education campuses.

Malin Ekstrand,
Facilitator
 

Malin Ekstrand works as an ICT-librarian at Danderyds University Hospital in Stockholm, currently focusing on developing online education aimed at medical staff. With a background in arts she finds creativity a great source of inspiration, especially when working with digital pedagogy. She participated in ONL 172, and is very happy to return to ONL181 as a co-facilitator.

Miriam Fischer
Facilitator
 

Miriam Fischer works in the E-Learning Team of Zurich University of Applied Science Department of Social Work. She has a linguistic and paedagogical background.

Birger Eriksson
Facilitator
 

Birger Eriksson works as an educational developer at Mälardalen University, Västerås in Sweden. He focus on the pedagogical aspects of ICT in Higher Education and has long experience in using digital tools for learning. He has 20 years of teaching experience and came to Mälardalen University in may 2018. Birger was a participant in ONL181 and will now facilitate in ONL.

Diane Pilkinton-Pihko
Co-facilitator
 

Diane Pilkinton-Pihko is a linguist, who is teaching English to non-native speakers at Aalto University in Finland. She did her graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her post-graduate studies at the University of Helsinki (Finland). Her research interests include English as a lingua franca, recognition or prior learning, and content and language integrated learning. Her main work involves teaching oral and written communication to students in the fields of engineering or industrial arts. In recent years, developing and teaching courses as blended or online have become a central focus. She designed and taught her first fully online course in 2011, and since then has continued to develop herself and her courses for e-learning.

Esther Ventura-Medina,
Co-facilitator
 

Esther Ventura-Medina works as a lecturer at the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, UK. She combines her engineering background, educational training and experience using student-centre pedagogies to support the development of professional skills in engineering students both face-to-face and online learning environments. Her research interests have focused on investigating teamwork and problem solving skills and the role that interactions have in student-centred settings. In her own practice she uses PBL as the learning method and is increasingly aware of ‘the digital’ which has taking her to explore further using online tools for collaboration in learning.

Katarzyna Sutryk,
Co-facilitator
 

Katarzyna Sutryk works at the University of Gdańsk, Institute of Oceanography, within a project that aims at making e-learning courses in marine biotechnology (FOCUS). That’s mainly why she participated as a student in the ONL172 edition (and she was very happy with this decision – her digital literacy has risen significantly!). ONL course made her an enthusiast of collaborative online learning (suddenly the world became so small), and from then on she became involved in advertising the project she works in, in social media, by making infographics and presentations. She even became acquainted with Twitter ?

Lina Nilsson
Co-facilitator
 

Lina Nilsson works as a lecturer in Public health at Mälardalen University in Västerås, Sweden. She mainly works with teaching public health in the nursing program. She is also very interested in digital pedagogy and participated in ONL181, and are looking forward to join ONL191 as a co-facilitator. Something not many know about Lina is that she doing pottery, she would be happy to sit at the potter’s wheel every night if it was possible.

Gregor Theilmeier
Co-facilitator
 

Gregor Theilmeier is a trained anesthesiologist, translational researcher and passionate teacher. He has taught at various medical schools since 1995 and now holds a professorship at the University of Oldenburg in Germany, where he participates in the founding of a new medical school. He holds a cross appointment at the University Medical Center in Groningen. He started to teach PBL (offline) courses in the late 1990s at the medical school of the University of Münster. Ever since he has been engaged in and passionate about teaching PBL in medical contexts. He has participated as a student in ONL181 and was so excited about online teaching and learning in the ONL format that he is immediately returning to ONL191 to join in supporting the next generation of ONL enthusiasts as a Co-facilitator.

Alexandra Wirth
Co-facilitator
 

My name is Alexandra Wirth. I work at the Careum Foundation, Department Educational Development and Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences Switzerland in Zurich, Department of Health Science. In Careum Educational Development I work as pedagogical researcher in the main areas of further development of curricula for problem-based learning (PBL) as well as teacher training PBL, interprofessionality and health literacy. At Kalaidos University I work as junior researcher in a EU project H2020 about mental health and wellbeing of adolescent young carers. I was an open learner in ONL 181 and was completely enthusiastic. And I am very happy to be a co-facilitator now.

Gideon Mekonnen Jonathan
Co-facilitator
 

 

Lina Andrén
Co-facilitator
 

Lina Andrén is a mathematics PhD turned librarian working at Mälardalen university in Eskilstuna, Sweden. She splits her time between teaching information literacy classes to students and providing library services for researchers, with a special interest in open science. Online teaching and tools have been part of her work for over ten years, but there is so much to learn and do. Lina found ONL181 to be a great way to find out more, reflect a bit, and add new things to her teaching practices. She is happy to be back for ONL191 as a co-facilitator!

Fernanda Lacerda
Co-facilitator Co-facilitator
 

Fernanda Lacerda da S. Machado is as a pharmacist at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – Macaé campus, Brazil, with a Master and Doctor degree in Marine Natural Products. Currently, she works with Social Pharmacy developing projects aiming to promote rational use of medicines by health professionals and consumers. She had an inspiring and enjoyable journey during her participation in ONL181. Now she strongly believes that online tools can be of great value to improve learning experience of students and also to enable collaborations between institutions worldwide.

Annika Skogster
Co-facilitator
 

Annika Skogster works at Arcada, University of Applied Science in Helsinki, Finland as a lecturer in clinical care. She is a nurse and a paramedic and teaches nurses, midwives and paramedics in clinical topics and her big passion is medication administration and calculation. She participated in ONL181 and was so inspired by the course and the pedagogy in it that she wanted to join as a co-facilitator in this course.

Sinako Mxabo
Co-facilitator
 

It is with great humility and pride that I introduce myself to all of you. I am Sinako Mxabo, an online Lecturer for Operations Management, Strategic Management, Introduction to Bookkeeping, Events Management as well as Public Relations Management. I have been an Academic Advisor for Educor since 2015. I studied Bachelor of Technology in Strategic Management in Transkei at Walter Sisulu University. I am currently busy with my PGD in Business Administration with University of KwaZulu Natal and my plan is to do my Master’s degree by 2020. I understand how vital it is becoming for individuals to expand their knowledge in order to successfully compete in our current economic times.

David Appel
Co-facilitator
 

David Appel is an e-learning specialist at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. He is responsible for the administration and development of the digital learning infrastructure and trains academic staff using education technology. He also provides support for the design, development and delivery of blended learning courses. A language teacher by training, he is fascinated by the opportunities of open education to broaden access to education and is particularly interested in developing the necessary digital literacies enabling participation.

Thashmee Karunaratne
Co-facilitator
 

Thashmee Karunaratne works at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, as a project manager and a senior researcher. Her main research interests focus on learning analytics and mining educational data, specifically on how to use the log data in the e-learning systems as another dimension for student and course evaluations, mainly for online courses. Use of ICT for bridging communication gaps among Ph.D. students and how blended supervision models help supervisors for conducting efficient and quality supervision are among other topics. Thashmee holds a Ph.D. in machine learning and data mining and currently involved in teaching courses and supervising students in both classroom and online settings. In parallel with the work at the Center for teacher education and inspired by taking part in ONL171, Thashmee is privileged to be a co-facilitator in ONL191.

Karin Müller
Co-facilitator
 

Karin Müller is a lecturer at Milpark Education (part of Stadio Multiversity) in Cape Town, South Africa. She teaches on the distance learning and online learning programs, and is also a Research Fellow at Stellenbosch University’s Business School. Karin was a participant in the ONL181 course and so greatly enjoyed the online learning experience and interaction with peers around the world, that she has again joined – this time as co-facilitator.

Charlotta Hilli
Co-facilitator
 

Charlotta Hilli works as a university teacher in general and higher education at Åbo Akademi University in Vaasa, Finland. Teaching future educational leaders and administrators and teachers in higher education. Her research interests are learning and knowledge in virtual learning environments, especially distance and online learning. She’s a post-doc researcher in the project HELLA (Higher Education Learning Lab) a research based development project on higher education pedagogy that is developing and piloting a new multilingual 60 ECTS study module in higher education for the needs of the universities and the universities of applied sciences.

raheel
Raheel Lakhani
Co-facilitator
 

Raheel Lakhani works as Manager for Digital Learning Projects at an international university press. He has worked as an  Educational Designer for Blended Learning at The Aga Khan University, Pakistan, which has campuses in East Africa and London as well. He provides services for course design, which includes providing faculty development facilitation and pedagogic input to faculty members in collaborative (re-)designing and offering of the blended learning courses. He is a recipient of High Honors in Masters of Education from The Aga Khan University. He participated as a digital innovator in an academic scholarship program ‘Social Innovation in Digital Context’ at Lund University funded by Swedish Institute, where he explored the development of a digital storytelling approach for promotion of pluralistic and creative expression. He holds Masters of Arts in Technology and Social Change from the same program. He is also a self-taught photographer, published in two coffee-table books and participated in few local and international competitions / exhibitions. His interests include eLearning pedagogy, learner’s autonomy, freedom of expression and pluralism, visual/textual narratives and digital collaborations.