Junhong Xiao is Emeritus Professor at the Open University of Shantou in China. His current research interests cover various aspects of open, distance and digital education. His international publications include a major contribution to the Springer Handbook of Open, Digital, and Distance Education, and many contemporary themes of online learning.
Junhong’s online profile: Junhong Xiao is Emeritus Professor at the Open University of Shantou (formerly known as Shantou Radio & Television University), a local branch of the Open University of China and a founding member of the Center for Open Education Research, the University of Oldenburg. He is Editor of the SpringerBriefs in Open and Distance Education series, and columnist for inspired, the newsletter of Open University Malaysia. He is on the editorial boards of various international journals, serves as peer reviewer for numerous high-impact journals (both English and Chinese), and provides consultancy in the areas of his expertise. His main research interest has been in various aspects of open, distance, and digital learning. For a complete list of his journal publications, please click https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5316-2957.
Xiao, J. (2024). Will Artificial Intelligence Enable Open Universities to Regain their Past Glory in the 21st Century?. Open Praxis, 16(1), 11–23. https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.16.1.618
Xiao, J. (2023). Critiquing Sustainable Openness in Technology-Based Education from the Perspective of Cost-Effectiveness and Accessibility. Open Praxis, 15(3), 244–254. https://doi.org/10.55982/openpraxis.15.3.569
Xiao, J. (2023). Critical Issues in Open and Distance Education Research. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 24(2), 213–228. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v24i2.6881
Peng, Y., & Xiao, J. (2022). Is the empirical research we have the research we can trust? A review of distance education journal publications in 2021. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 17(2). Retrieved from http://asianjde.com/ojs/index.php/AsianJDE/article/view/659
Xiao, J. (2022). Introduction to History, Theory, and Research in ODDE. In O. Olaf Zawacki-Richter & I. Jung. (Eds.), Handbook of Open, Distance and Digital Education (pp. 15-25). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0351-9_1-1
Nominated works (may require purchase):
Xiao, J. (2024). Revisiting the Theory of Transactional Distance: Implications for Open, Distance, and Digital Education in the 21st Century. American Journal of Distance Education, https://doi.org/ 10.1080/08923647.2024.2303328
Xiao, J. (2019). Digital transformation in higher education: critiquing the five-year development plans (2016-2020) of 75 Chinese universities. Distance Education, 40(4), 515-533. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/01587919.2019.1680272
Xiao, J. (2017). Learner-content interaction in distance education: The weakest link in interaction research. Distance Education, 38(1), 123-135. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1298982
Paul Levinson, PhD, is a pioneer of online education, still teaching classes in person and via Zoom as a Professor at Fordham University in New York City, after nearly 50 years in university classrooms, and online classes in the 1980s at Connected Education which he co-founded with his wife Tina Vozick. Paul is a dedicated pedagogue, novelist, and singer/songwriter, whose advocacy for online education remains as energetic as it was in his early days with Connect Ed.
Levinson, P. (2022). The Explosive Growth of Social Media: Trump, COVID-19, the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, and Elon Musk. Studia Humanistyczne AGH, vol. 21/2. https://doi.org/10.7494/human.2022.21.2.9
Levinson, P. (2023). The Beatles and podcasts: Permanent passports to better understanding. The Journal of Beatles Studies, Volume 2023, No. Spring/Autumn. https://doi.org/10.3828/jbs.2023.12
Mike Sharples is Emeritus Professor of Educational Technology in the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University. Mike’s extensive career and multiple publications are concerned with innovation in educational technology, which include the Innovating Pedagogy report series and early involvement with Artificial intelligence.
Sharples, M. (2023). Towards social generative AI for education: theory, practices and ethics. Learning: Research and Practice, 9(2), 159-167. DOI: 10.1080/23735082.2023.2261131
Sharples, M. (2022). Automated Essay Writing: An AIED Opinion. International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 32, 1119-1126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40593-022-00300-7
Sharples, M. (2023). John Clark’s Latin verse machine: 19th century computational creativity. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 45, 1, 31-42.
Sharples, M., Scanlon, E., Ainsworth, S., Anastopoulou, S., Collins, T., Crook, C., Jones, A., Kerawalla, L., Littleton, K., Mulholland, P. & O’Malley, C. (2015). Personal Inquiry: Orchestrating Science Investigations Within and Beyond the Classroom. Journal of the Learning Sciences,2 (2), 308-341.
In this episode, you’ll learn about Emeritus Professor Otto Peters through his last PhD student Professor Olaf Zawacki-Richter. Otto is one of the founding theorists in distance education – in fact, Otto Peters created that term. Otto is now 98, but his work continues to inspire.
Emeritus Professor Otto Peters (left) and Professor Olaf Zawacki-Richter (right)
Please do take opportunity to enjoy Olaf’s interview and investigate Professor Peters’ work. You can learn more about Professor Peters here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Peters.
Professor Florence Martin is Professor of Learning, Design and Technology with North Carolina State University. Florence’s teaching spans asynchronous, synchronous and bisyncronous modalities – and her applied research (and associated systematic reviews of literature) informs her teaching, while also enriching the practice of others.
Martin, F., Bolliger, D., & Flowers, C. (2021). Design Matters: Development and Validation of the Online Course Design Elements (OCDE). International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 22(2), 46-71. https://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/5187
Martin, F., Kumar, S., Ritzhaupt, A., & Polly, D. (2023). Bichronous Online Learning: Award-Winning Online Instructor Practices of Blending Asynchronous and Synchronous Online Modalities. The Internet and Higher Education, 56, 100879. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1096751622000355
Martin, F., Ritzhaupt, A. Kumar, S., & Budhrani, K. (2019). Award-winning Faculty Online Teaching Practices: Course design, Assessment and Evaluation, and Facilitation. The Internet and Higher Education, 42, 34-43. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1096751618305669
Dr Christian Stracke is the Coordinator for Virtual Coordination and Cloud Strategy at the University of Bonn in Germany. His main research areas are open education, Artificial Intelligence and their societal impacts building on many years of international scholarship related to learning innovations and quality in digital education.
Stracke, C. M., Chounta, I.-A., Holmes, W., Tlili, A., & Bozkurt, A. (2023). A standardised PRISMA-based protocol for systematic reviews of the scientific literature on Artificial Intelligence and education (AI&ED). Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching, 6 (2). https://doi.org/10.37074/jalt.2023.6.2.38
Stracke, C. M., Burgos, D., Santos-Hermosa, G., Bozkurt, A., Sharma, R. C., Swiatek, C., Inamorato dos Santos, A., Mason, J., Ossiannilsson, E., Shon, J. G., Wan, M., Agbu, J.-F., Farrow, R., Karakaya, Ö., Nerantzi, C., Ramírez Montoya, M. S., Conole, G., Cox, G., & Truong, V. (2022). Responding to the initial challenge of COVID-19 pandemic: Analysis of international responses and impact in school and higher education. Sustainability, 14(3), 1876. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031876 (awarded by the National Institute for Digital Learning (Ireland) as Global Top 10 COVID-19 research in 2022, see: https://nidl.blog/2023/01/18/top-10-covid-19-articles-published-in-2022-several-major-literature-reviews)
Stracke, C. M. (2020). Open Science and Radical Solutions for Diversity, Equity and Quality in Research: A Literature Review of Different Research Schools, Philosophies and Frameworks and Their Potential Impact on Science and Education. In: Radical Solutions and Open Science (pp. 17-37). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4276-3_2
Stracke, C. M. (2019). Quality Frameworks and Learning Design for Open Education. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 20(2), 180-203. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v20i2.4213
Stracke, C. M. (2019). Invited Keynote on “The Quality and the Future of Open Education and MOOCs” at 10th International E-Learning Conference (IEC) 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1UcvGLQl5M
Nominated works (may require purchase):
Stracke, C. M., Chounta, I.-A., & Holmes, W. (2023). Artificial Intelligence and Education: Ethical questions and guidelines for their relations based on human rights, democracy and the rule of law. In: D. Burgos (Ed.), Radical Solutions for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transformation in Education. Lecture Notes in Educational Technology. Springer. (accepted, in press).
Stracke, C. M. (2018). Como a Educação Aberta pode melhorar a qualidade de aprendizagem e produzir impacto em alunos, organizações e na sociedade? [= How can Open Education improve learning quality and achieve impact for learners, organizations and in society?] In M. Duran, T. Amiel, & C. Costa (Eds.), Utopias and Distopias da Tecnologia na Educação a Distância e Aberta (pp. 499-545). Campinas: & Niterói: UNICAMP & UFF.
Professor Tian Belawati is the former Rector of Universitas Terbuka (Indonesia Open University), a keen advocate for inclusive online learning, and a previous ICDE President as well as the Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU) President. Tian has seen Universitas Terbuka transform over time from a traditional correspondence open university into a major provider of accessible education.
Belawati, T., Indrajit, E., Sapriati, A., & Supardi, U.S. (2023).Self-assessment instrument of teacher readiness for teaching in the digital age. In press (Research report is available upon request).
Belawati, T. (2022). Introduction to Infrastructure, Quality Assurance, and Support Systems of ODDE. In: Handbook of Open, Distance and Digital Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-0351-9_87-1
Distinguished Professor Dr Vanessa Dennen is an international expert in education, with a specific focus on instructional systems and learning technologies at Florida State University. Her scholarship dates back to the early days of online education, as does her ‘people first, content second, technology third’ approach.
Dr Liz Marr is an advocate of lifelong learning, drawing on her own success as a lifelong learner. Liz is a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Universities Association for lifelong learning and served as Pro-Vice Chancellor (Students) alongside other teaching and learning roles with The Open University, UK.
Professor Martha Cleveland-Innes is Professor of Open, Digital, and Distance Education with Athabasca University. Her work related to the Community of Inquiry model continues to advance thinking in the area of online learning practice. Listen out for a good IDEA related to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility and how these might be combined through robust education planning.
Martha’s online profile: Dr Martha Cleveland-Innes is a Professor of Open, Digital, and Distance Education at Athabasca University. She is Editor-in-Chief of the bilingual Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, and the co-author of open source publications The Guide to Blended Learning (2018) and Participant Experience in an Inquiry-Based Massive Open Online Course (2022). Martha is an instructor, co-designer, and researcher for the open online courses Designing Communities of Inquiry, Blended Learning Practice. and Leading Change for Teaching and Learning in a Digital World. In 2019 Martha received an Honorary Doctorate from Mid-Sweden University and served as a member of the Advisory Group for Digital Literacy with the B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education in 2021-2022. She was Virtual Educator in Residence at the National University of Singapore in Fall, 2022 and is currently Visiting Professor of Pedagogy at Mid-Sweden University.
Sangrá, A., & Cleveland-Innes, M. F. (2020). Leadership in a new era of higher distance education. In An introduction to distance education (pp. 149-167). Routledge.
Matheos, K., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2018). Blended learning: Enabling higher education reform. Revista Eletrônica de Educação, 12(1), 238-244.
Orr, T., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2015). Appreciative leadership: Supporting education innovation. International review of research in open and distributed learning, 16(4), 235-241.
Cleveland-Innes, M. (2012). Who needs leadership? Social problems, change, and education futures. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(2), 232-235.
Workman, T., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2012). Leadership, personal transformation, and management. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(4), 313-323.
Cleveland-Innes, M. F., & Sangra, A. (2010). Leadership in a new era of higher distance education. In An introduction to distance education (pp. 239-259). Routledge.
