Conference Speakers

John Stone - Keynote Speaker

John Stone is currently Chief Executive of the LSN, an independent company set up in 2006 as a successor to a series of government agencies undertaking research, development and staff training. It currently employs over 250 staff at its offices in London and Belfast. At LSN he leads an organisation which aims to make learning work- from the classroom to the boardroom. It does this by developing people and organisations through consultancy, outsourcing, research, technology and training. He is a governor at the London City Lit and a member of both the London Higher Skills and JISC Advance Boards, and a member of the UKCES Policy Advisory Group. He chaired the BECTA e-Maturity Framework Design Authority, was a member of the Higher Education Funding Council Committee of Enquiry into the Changing Learner Experience and a Board member at the Scottish Further Education Unit. Prior to this appointment John was Principal of Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College. He was also Vice-Chairman of the Joint Information Systems Committee, Chair of the Association of Colleges London Region, a Board Observer at the London Development Agency and a Board member of West London Business, Regenesis and the Southall Regeneration Partnership.

Presentation: Keynote

Michael Lambert

Michael Lambert has served as the Executive Director of the Distance Education and Training Council since 1992. He earned a BS degree in English/Education and an MA Degree in English Literature from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA Degree in Finance from George Mason University. He has taught, written and lectured widely on distance education and accreditation since 1972, and serves or has served on numerous advisory boards. He has many awards including the DETC Distinguished Recognition Award, the DETC Distinguished Service Award, the IUP Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the European Association for Distance Learning’s “Roll of Honour” for his lifetime contributions to the field.

Presentation: Growing your institute responsibly, with quality in every aspect: the DETC experience

Stuart Udell

Stuart Udell has served as Chief Executive Officer of Penn Foster since 2007 and also currently serves as President of Postsecondary Education for The Princeton Review, Penn Foster's parent company. Previously Stuart served as President of Kaplan K12 Learning Services and President of the School Renaissance Institute. Stuart also currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the National Dropout Prevention Center/Network, part of Clemson University . Stuart has an MBA from Columbia University and a BS from Bucknell University.

Presentation: Growing your institute responsibly, with quality in every aspect: the DETC experience

Gary Keisling

Gary Keisling is currently Chairman and CEO of Ashworth College. Gary has worked as an executive in the field of distance education for over 25 years, including several years as Managing Director of International operations for ICS Learning Systems. Gary served on the Distance Education and Training Council’s Board of Trustees from 1989 until 1998. From 1993 until 1996, he served as the First Vice President, and from 1996 until 1998 he served as President. In 1994, he was given the DETC Distinguished Service Award for his outstanding service and in 1998 he was awarded DETC’s Distinguished Recognition Award. He joined the DETC Accrediting Commission in 2003 and was elected Vice Chair in 2005, serving until his term ended in 2006. He is currently a member of the business standards committee of DETC.

Presentation: Growing your institute responsibly, with quality in every aspect: the DETC experience

Michael Lammersdorf

Michael Lammersdorf has been active in the branch of distance learning since 1987. He was Managing Director of the Klett Distance education group and has been involved in the funding of several Distance Learning universities and Distance Learning institutes in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Michael has been a member of the board of the national distance learning association in Germany (Forum DistancE-Learning) and since 2005 has held the position of Vice-President of the European Association for Distance Learning. Since 2009 he has been Managing Director of the AKAD University-group in Germany and the Metaphora group with ICS (UK) and NTI (NL).

Presentation: EADL Introduction

Charles Nixon

Charles Nixon is the Founder and Chairman of Cambridge Marketing College. This specialist professional college was founded in 1991 to provide a modern fresh approach to training executives in marketing and communications techniques. The aim of the College is to provide practical information and tuition to executives and their companies. Proactively promoting marketing education and assisting individuals to achieve personal success within that discipline has resulted in major growth in the number of trained marketers. Charles has an MBA from Warwick and is a Fellow of the CIM, CAM and the RSA.

Presentation: Using Social Media

John Heffernan

John has over twenty years experience of Online Marketing, most recently focused in Search Marketing. John has developed a proven and transparent approach offering cost-effective online marketing strategies including: SEO, PPC, Social Media & effective website content. John has an educative approach to SEO and has delivered numerous presentations for Internet World, Online Marketing Show, Sunday Times Enterprise Network, and IOD – to name but a few! John has a wide ranging client portfolio from the public and private sector plus numerous SME clients.

Presentation: SEO - from basic foundation to the future of search: from 2010 an beyond.

David Morley

David Morley started his working life as a research chemist, but then moved into the educational charities sector. He worked for the British Association for the Advancement of Science for sixteen years, the last ten as its Chief Executive. Since 1997, he has been Chief Executive of the Open and Distance Learning Quality Council. He enjoys listening and learning, but reads too little, and thinks too much.

Presentations: Thirteen Trends for the 21st Century, Complaints! Complaints! Complaints! The best sources of honest feedback?, What was all that about?

Mark Endean

Mark Endean is Senior Lecturer in Materials Engineering at the UK Open University. During his twenty-five years with the University, he has taught a wide range of engineering topics. He has held posts as Director of the Engineering Programme and Associate Dean of his Faculty, and works closely with the UK Higher Education Academy Subject Centres for Materials and Engineering. His main areas of interest at present are in the quality management of online and distance education, and in novel ways of supporting distance learners engaged in collaborative work.

Presentations: Open University Student Consultation, Co-operative and collaborative learning

Andreas Vollmer

Andreas Vollmer has been Head of Programme Management and Services at the SGD since the start of 2009. He has been a member of the management team at the SGD and the Wilhelm Büchner Hochschule since the beginning of 2007. Before his current position Vollmer, a graduate in Business Administration, held managerial posts in the fields of content, innovation, service and quality management for various companies including Bertelsmann and E-Plus Mobilfunk. Innovative products and a strong quality orientation leading to maximum customer satisfaction have been key focuses of Vollmer's work from the outset.

Presentation: Increasing Customer Satisfaction

Phil Butcher

Philip Butcher is the OU e-assessment project leader and a Fellow in the Centre for Open Learning of Mathematics, Science, Computing and Technology (COLMSCT). His work in the centre has been motivated by the perception that recent developments in computing and communications technologies can lead to e-assessments fulfilling a much wider role than have previously been possible, combining motivating interactions with rich, and instant, feedback to create engaging e-assessments across a broad range of learning outcomes.

Presentation: E-assessment an the independent learner

Nick Charge

Nick Charge is an Assistant Director at the University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations, part of Cambridge Assessment. He has been involved in the development and management of a number of different ESOL examinations, including the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Nick’s current responsibilities include the management and development of English language tests and Cambridge ESOL’s professional qualifications and tests for teachers of English. He also has joint responsibility for e-learning strategy within ESOL and for the deployment of a Learning Management System delivering training to internal staff and blended learning courses in English language to external customers.

Presentation: An awarding body’s use of a VLE

Kit Sadgrove

Kit Sadgrove is CEO of Home Study Courses Ltd, a distance learning business with offices in the UK, Australia and South Africa.

Presentation: Ensuring tutor quality

Steve Sidaway

Steve Sidaway is a graduate of Sheffield University and started his career as a teacher. He moved into academic publishing working for Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, Wiley and electronic publishing with Pearson and Chadwick-Healey/Proquest. He joined txttools 8 years ago and has helped establish the company as the leading supplier of SMS communications in over 50% of the Further and Higher Education community in the UK. Steve’s presentation will include case examples in Student Support, Learning and Teaching and Marketing and Recruitment.

Presentation: Using text messaging for course delivery and student support

Ronny Mathieu

Ronny Mathieu is Head of the Department Centrale Services & Quality Management at the Swiss Distance University of Applied Sciences. Among other things, he is responsible for managing the teaching activities and the corporate communication. He holds an MA degree in German Studies, Media and Communication Sciences from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). His main research interests are new media, communication in general and web-based applications.

Presentation: Projekt eBook

Keith Kilpatrick

Keith Kilpatrick is currently an Assistant Director with LSN leading the organisation’s Technology Enabled Learning offer. This offer includes the MoLeNET project, the UK’s largest and most diverse implementation of mobile learning. Keith has worked in the FHE sector for several years, working on projects including the Northern Ireland FHE sector’s network infrastructure and learning delivery platform development. Keith has also worked with Cisco Systems and Microsoft setting up academic partnerships in order to promote industry standard training in colleges. Keith maintains a keen interest in progressing blended learning delivery models from both a technical and pedagogical perspective.

Presentation: Mobile Learning

Peter Scott

Peter J. Scott is the Director of the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University. KMI is a Research and Development Unit which explores the future of learning and the boundaries between knowledge and the media we use to work with it. Three current research threads are: telepresence; streaming media systems; and ubiquity. In June 2008 he coordinated the launch of The Open University into the Apple iTunes U. portal, which will have exceeded 10 Million downloads before the end of 2010. Peter is currently the President of the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning, and the coordinator and scientific director of STELLAR, the EU’s 7th Framework Network of Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning.

Presentation: The use of Flash Meeting