Open Learning and Formal Credentialing in Higher Education: Curriculum Models and Institutional Policies

Shirley Reushle is the Deputy Director of USQ’s Australian Digital Futures Institute, a research and innovation institute. Her discipline is education with a particular focus on online learning and teaching. She has taught online in Higher Education for over fifteen years and her doctoral research was in transformative approaches to professional development for online educators. She regularly consults in designing and facilitating online learning and has authored articles on the future of Higher Education, transformative learning, online learning design and the creation and evaluation of learning spaces. Through participation in the Research Leadership Development Program, Shirley hopes to further her research and the concept of “taking people into the future and making it real.” This will be done through a focused exploration of the impact on learning of highly interactive digital communities and the spaces those communities inhabit. She also plans to extend the research work she has already conducted in transformative learning theory. Amy Antonio is an early career researcher who was awarded her PhD from Deakin University in 2011. Her research background is in literature. Amy has been using her humanities background to inform her research interests, which include social media in higher education, technologies to support student engagement and retention and utilizing digital curation tools to cultivate digital information literacy skills among higher education students. Amy is currently engaged in a number of research projects, including the piloting of digital curation tools for developing digital information literacy skills and the examination of social and new media usage among Australian Indigenous youth in regional and remote communities. Amy was part of the successful Strategic Research Fund grant application at USQ: Innovative Mental Health Solutions. Amy is working with a team of clinical psychologists to examine how social networking platforms and digital technologies can be utilized effectively in the delivery of eHealth promotions and digital support communities. Mike Keppell is the Executive Director, Australian Digital Futures Institute (ADFI) at the University of Southern Queensland. Mike has a long professional history in higher education in Australia, Canada and Hong Kong. He was Professor of Higher Education and Director of the Flexible Learning Institute at Charles Sturt University, and prior to that was Head of the Centre for Learning, Teaching and Technology at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Having published widely in the field of flexible learning, and with a background in educational technology, extensive community involvement and strength in design-based research, Professor Keppell has a range of valuable skills and experience in Higher Education. His research focuses on learning spaces, blended learning, learning oriented assessment, authentic learning and transformative learning using design based research. Mike has edited two books: Instructional Design: Case Studies in Communities of Practice and Physical and Virtual Learning Spaces in Higher Education: Concepts for the Modern Learning Environment . Mike is a Life Member of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite). Mike is currently co-leader of the Network of Australasian Tertiary Associations (NATA) which has a vision to facilitate a sustainable collaborative network between established higher education associations (ACODE, ascilite, CADAD, HERDSA and ODLAA).