Author Biographies
Nikoletta Agonács
Nikoletta Agonács holds a bachelor’s degree in Romanesque Philology, specialised in Italian and with a minor in English studies; a master’s degree in Foreign Language Teaching (Italian and Hungarian); and a PhD in Information and Communication Technologies in Education. In the last five years, she has worked in the e-learning field as an Instructional Designer at both public and corporate organisations. Currently, she works as a Learning Experience Designer at a multinational company and she is an invited Assistant Professor at the Instituto de Educação of the Universidade de Lisboa. Her research interests are MOOCs, Language MOOCs, and adult learning theories.
Shlomo Back
Shlomo Back is a Professor of Philosophy of Education and the former president of Kaye Academic College of Education. He practices heutagogy in his courses, and his fields of research include Epistemology and Ethics, with a particular interest in the relationship between theory and practice in teacher education programs. His published books include Ways of Learning to Teach and Exploring Heutagogy in Higher Education: Academia Meets the Zeitgeist ,co-written with Dr. Amnon Glassner.
Maha Bali
Maha Bali is Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching, American University in Cairo. She has a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield, UK. She is co-founder of virtuallyconnecting.org (a grassroots movement that challenges academic gatekeeping at conferences) and co-facilitator of Equity Unbound (an equity-focused, open, connected intercultural learning curriculum, which has also branched into academic community activities Continuity with Care, Socially Just Academia, and a collaboration with OneHE: Community-building Resources). She writes and speaks frequently about social justice, critical pedagogy, and open and online education. She blogs regularly at http://blog.mahabali.me and tweets @bali_maha
Ilanit Bar-Tov
Ilanit Bar-Tov is the Principal of Tomer, an experimental elementary school in Beer Sheva, Israel. She has been working in the Israeli education system for 27 years. Bar-Tov holds an M.A. in Administration, Society and Education Policy from Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Since 2015, she has been the chairperson of the Beer Sheva Principals Association and a member of the National Principals Association.
Lisa Marie Blaschke
Lisa Marie Blaschke is program lead of the online Home Hub at Learnlife in Barcelona, Spain. Previously, she was program director of and instructor in the Master in Management of Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, as well as a senior researcher at DHBW in Heilbronn. She is a former executive committee member of the European Distance Education and E-Learning Network (EDEN) and is a Senior EDEN Fellow. Lisa has a BS in Technical Communication, and two master’s degrees (MDE, MBA), and a PhD in Education. Prior to academia, Lisa worked for SAP in Walldorf, Germany, leading and implementing enterprise-wide knowledge management and training processes and solutions. Lisa’s research interests are in the areas of self-determined learning (heutagogy), online collaborative learning, and the pedagogical application of web 2.0 technology and social media.
Aras Bozkurt
Aras Bozkurt is a researcher and faculty member in the Department of Distance Education, Open Education Faculty at Anadolu University, Turkey. He holds MA and PhD degrees in distance education. Dr. Bozkurt conducts empirical studies on distance education, open and distance learning, online learning, networked learning, and educational technology to which he applies various critical theories, such as connectivism, rhizomatic learning, and heutagogy. He is also interested in emerging research paradigms, including social network analysis, sentiment analysis, and data mining. He shares his views on his Twitter feed @arasbozkurt
Devin Carberry
Devin Carberry is the Director of Learning and the founding learning guide for Learnlife Barcelona. For the last twenty years, Devin has worked in a variety of educational settings — from after school to public policy and from classroom teaching to non-profit leadership — and in schools with a variety of progressive pedagogies — from multiple intelligences to expeditionary learning. His teaching has been featured in both national print and broadcast media, and he has served on the Arizona Governor’s Task Force on Education and written for Rethinking Schools magazine. Devin has helped launch three learning communities and two non-profit organizations. He is writing a book, Building the Dream School, about the tools, mindsets and mental models that enable innovative learning communities.
Andy Collis
Andy Collis (BA.Hons, A.T.D., M.A., PhD.) was born in Nottinghamshire, U.K., in 1956. He gained a BA. Hons in Fine At Painting & Printmaking, from Sheffield University, taught art in high schools, operated his own studio, produced book illustrations and then was a lecturer in Art at West Notts Technical College before emigrating to Australia in 1989. He was senior lecturer in Visual Art & Art History at Avondale University College, N.S.W., for 25 years- completing PhD at Newcastle University. In 2018 he set up his own studio and practices his painting and drawing full-time on the Central Coast. His work is represented by the KAB gallery in Terrigal and Sydney. He resides with his wife and three children in Saratoga, Central Coast, NSW.
Dave Cormier
Dave Cormier is currently working on digital learning strategy and special projects with the University of Windsor. As a change leader, an educational researcher and learning community advocate he has spent the last twenty years trying to make education better. Cormier has lead teams in k12, college and university environments. He has published on open education, Rhizomatic Learning, MOOCs (Massive/Open Online Courses), and the impact of technology on the future of high education. His keynotes in the last couple of years have centred around how coming to know is a messy, imprecise process at once intensely individual and necessarily embedded in a community – Rhizomatic Learning. You can follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/davecormier and check out him out at http://youtube.com/davecormier
Matt Crosslin
Matt Crosslin, Ph.D. is currently an Instructional Designer II at Orbis Education, where he works with faculty to create student-centered, active learning-based courses. He is also part-time faculty at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley, where he teaches Masters and Doctoral courses in Educational Technology and Instructional Design. Matt holds a Ph.D. in Learning Technologies from the University of North Texas, a Master of Education in Educational Technology from UT Brownsville, and a Bachelors of Science in Education from Baylor University. His research interests include learning pathways, sociocultural theory, learner agency, heutagogy, learning theory, and open educational practices. Prior to working at Orbis, he spent nearly 15 years at the University of Texas at Arlington as both a Learning Innovation Researcher and an Instructional Designer. He also blogs occasionally at EduGeek Journal, watches or reads a lot of SciFi and Fantasy, and occasionally paints or draws something.
Nigel Ecclesfield
Nigel Ecclesfield is an independent researcher exploring learning, teaching and the use of digital technologies for learning, having worked in the English post-compulsory education sectors from 1978 to 2003 and then national technology agencies to 2016 as well as being an inspector. Nigel has managed and published research since 1986, including the production of national statistics for Government on the adoption and use of digital technologies in English post-compulsory education and research and project management in U.K. and European settings, contributing to books journals and conference proceedings. Since 2005 he has worked in partnership with Fred Garnett, publishing extensively, including the authorship of their book “ Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation” published in 2020 which explores their theories of learning in digital contexts and the institutional consequences of Heutagogy and learner-generated contexts.
Philip Ecclesfield
Philip Ecclesfield has experience of running outdoor nurseries including managing an award-winning setting, and running training for teachers, parents and managers in schools and nurseries. Phil is an advocate for all things Early Years (pre-school in the UK) and outdoor learning. Having trained as a social researcher and primary school teacher, Phil began working in inner London schools before becoming a tutor in Austria. This change inspired him to alter his teaching to include more time for his students in natural settings. On returning to London, he made the transition to the outdoor nursery world, where he has been ever since, additionally training in Forest School techniques to enhance the learning of children in natural settings. Through his nursery work, he promotes a child-led, play based approach which supports the predisposition that young children have for learning and collaboration that promotes their development as co-operative and resilient learners.
Toqa el Ahwal
Toqa El Ahwal is a 21-year old marketing senior at The American University in Cairo. Previously living in Alexandria before moving to Cairo to live through the 4 year university experience that helped shape her current personality. A Major in business and two minors in Psychology and Economics are Toqas academic backgrounds. Other than that Toqa is very interested in Extracurricular activities that AUC offers where teamwork and connections are built. Toqas main personal hobby is traveling around the world and learning about different cultures through first hand experiences!
Youssef Fahmy
Youssef Fahmy is a chemistry graduate student from the American University in Cairo. He is a musician in the Egyptian metal/rock scene and plays in the current underground music as a bass player. He also writes songs with friends. He is the Editor in chief responsible for reviving Avant Garde, a magazine focused on reviving political discourse on AUC Campus.
Fred Garnett
Fred Garnett started teaching about the social impact of technology in 1984. When the web came along, he started building web-based learning projects, becoming Head of Community Programmes at the UK Department of Education in 2000, building digital learning centres and online platforms. He was then made a Royal Society of Arts Fellow for “innovative and creative work in community learning”. In 2002, he helped build a social-network for learning which was rejected by the UK government. That team became the Learner-Generated Contexts Research Group looking at post-Web2.0 models of learning, developing the PAH continuum and embracing Heutagogy. Since 2013 he has been co-ordinating World Heutagogy Day to better understand and further disseminate the ideas. He is working on Ambient Learning Cities with Manchester, Lisboa and Timisoara. In 2020 he wrote Digital Learning: Architectures of Participation with Nigel Ecclesfield and is currently working on Heutagogy for Teachers with English schools.
Amnon Glassner
Amnon Glassner (PhD) is a senior lecturer and pedagogical guide at Kaye Academic College of Education. His main research interests are heutagogy, cognition in education, creative and critical thinking in education, and intelligent use of ICT for meaningful learning. He has recently published a book, co-written with Prof. Shlomo Back: Exploring Heutagogy in Higher Education: Academia Meets the Zeitgeist.
Stewart Hase
Dr Stewart Hase has always been a believer in human agency, and he first realised that people have agency over their own learning while watching nurses learn at work in the 1970s. As an educator, he started experimenting with learner agency by providing nurses with the opportunity to negotiate their own learning within a very structured curriculum. The experiments continued on into higher education in both face-to-face and distance education, and in professional development programs in workplaces as a consultant for many years. Finally in 2000, Stewart and Chris Kenyon put a name to a set of principles and practices that put the learner at the centre of the learning process and called it heutagogy, or self-determined learning. Now an independent scholar, consultant and psychologist in clinical practice, Stewart is semi-retired and lives in a small fishing village in the north coast of NSW, Australia. In between traveling, painting, writing, fishing, golfing, and grandchildren, Stewart still seeks to better understand how people learn. www.stewarthase.com.
Mai Hashad
Mai Hashad is a former student of the American University in Cairo (AUC). She graduated a in 2019 with a major in Finance and a double minor in Math and Financial Mathematics. She is currently working as a Teaching Assistant at AUC for several Finance and Business courses. Mai is very passionate about teaching, and she wishes to pursue her doctorate degree in the United States in the future.
Khaled Abou Hussein
Khaled Abou Hussein attended school under the British IGCSE system and went on to graduate from the American University in Cairo in the Spring of 2020. Majoring in business administration with a concentration in finance, he was able to hone his talent with numbers which drove him to seek a career in brokerage and investment banking. On the personal side, he grew up playing several sports, including swimming and basketball, which evolved into a passion for bodybuilding around the age of 15. Moreover, reading occupies most of his free time alongside writing, his secret indulgence.
Haya Kaplan
Haya Kaplan (PhD) is a senior lecturer at Kaye Academic College of Education. She is the head of the Center for Motivation and Self-Determination as well as the head of Kaye Induction Unit. Kaplan is also the head of the Educational Counseling M.Ed program in the College. Her primary research interests are motivational processes affecting autonomous motivation in students and teachers, and educational reforms based on Self-Determination Theory.
Chris Kenyon
Chris Kenyon has worked in every level of education over the past sixty years. He has also been a consultant to governments and organisations in Europe, Africa, North America, the Middle East and Asia. He has a belief that life is about learning, and he is known for his innovative approaches in several spheres. His time as head of a college for international students in Melbourne, Australia led to his writing the bestselling book “More than G’day” about teaching and learning across cultures. Stewart Hase and Chris have worked together in postgraduate education work and management consultancies with government departments for twenty-five years: they devised Heutagogy as a new approach to learning. He has also had a lifelong interest in aviation, though now flies as a passenger, not as the pilot. Chris and his wife live in a passive solar house that he designed and built: kangaroos and kookaburras are daily visitors to their rural retreat outside Canberra, Australia.
Vijaya Bhanu Kote
Vijaya Bhanu Kote is a teacher and headteacher living and working in a remote rural location in Andhra Pradesh in India. She has been teaching since 1998 in primary schools, developing learning activities using the agency of her learners and local communities with digital technologies to address local issues of remoteness and rural poverty. Vijaya has been carrying out extended studies of heutagogy in her work settings, promoting learner-centered activities that includes her training teachers with their pupils as a matter of principle and engaging parents and local communities in supporting learning. Vijaya’s work has been recognised and presented internationally as well as in India and she has developed a heutagogy community of practice among teachers and parents that seeks to provide accreditation of the project work undertaken by the group members. She has published her work in Telugu, Hindi and English as a teacher, researcher and freelance journalist and translator.
Val Margarit
Val Margarit is Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Keiser University, Pembroke Pines, Florida. Previously, Val was a K12 teacher, college professor and department chair, course developer, and faculty success and development trainer. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in sociology, an Ed.S in education, an Ed.D. in educational leadership, and certification in inclusive leadership. Her research interests are student and faculty success, education leadership, culture, and social behavior. As a lifelong learner, Val is passionate about helping people become empowered and achieve their full potential. She has won numerous awards, including Teacher of the Year, and the Free to Choose Excellence in Education awards. She developed several college courses including The Complete Guide: Achieving Success in College and Beyond. Her books include the best-selling “Why Not You? How to Become an Empowered Woman and The Successful Student Mindset. Learn more about Val at www.valmargarit.com / valmargarit@gmail.com
João Filipe Matos
João Filipe Matos is a Full Professor at the Instituto de Educação of the Universidade de Lisboa (IEULisboa) and a researcher at the Research Centre on Education and Training. He holds a degree in Mathematics; a master’s degree, a PhD and an Aggregation degree in Education. He was the Director of the FCT Technology Enhanced Learning and Societal Challenges Doctoral program and of the e-Learning, Distance Training and Computer Science Education Master programs. He was President of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education and coordinated the Centre for Competence in Technology and Innovation, the unit of IEULisboa dedicated to support schools and teachers in the field of digital technologies in collaboration with the Portuguese Ministry of Education.
Maria Northcote
Prof. Maria Northcote is the Director of Higher Research Degrees at Avondale University College (Lake Macquarie, NSW, Australia). She has been an active educational researcher since 1998. Most of her research focuses on the principles and processes associated with adult learning, researcher education and learning technologies in higher education.
Emma O'Brien
Emma O'Brien is an Academic Developer in Technology Enhanced Learning in Mary Immaculate College where she teaches in the area of digital pedagogy both in the context of faculty development and undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Since 2004, Emma has successfully led several EU projects in the use of digital technologies to enhance pedagogies which foster learner agency such as problem and inquiry-based learning (PBL), work based learning and entrepreneurial mindset. She is currently the co-chair of Facilitate, the problem/inquiry-based learning network in Ireland.
Jean Reale
Jean Reale has over 20 years’ experience as a teacher and educational technologist in both the public and private sector in Ireland with a specific focus on creating inclusive learning environments. Jean is a member of the Mary Immaculate College Learning Enhancement and Academic Development Centre; she works as a Technology Enhanced Learning Designer, where through a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) lens she champions and drives institutional technology-enhanced learning and teaching innovations. Jean is currently a PhD candidate in Trinity College Dublin researching the effectiveness of UDL in online learning environments for neurodiverse learners.
Motladi Angie Setlhako
Dr. Motladi Angeline Setlhako has a doctorate in process evaluation of programmes from the University of South Africa. She joined UNISA as a Course Coordinator for Technology Education and developed Technology learning guides and facilitated Technology Modules in the Senior Phase. She managed the National Professional Diploma in Education, a programme offered at UNISA, designed to improve the qualifications of unqualified and under-qualified teachers. She subsequently designed and developed the new Online module for the College of Education. Her focus on online teaching and learning, employing heutagogical practices brought a new lease in her conceptualisation of teaching. She now encourages practicing teachers to unlearn their traditional teaching techniques, learn and re-learn new approaches to teaching. She advocates for the infusion of ICT and the utilisation of technology in teacher education programmes. Angie is a Senior Lecturer and currently Acting Manager in the Teaching Practice Office.
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