Speakers

Alan Shepard is president and vice-chancellor of Concordia University and professor of English in Concordia’s Faculty of Arts and Science. He has extensive experience in university administration in the United States and Canada. Dr. Shepard has written and lectured internationally on a variety of scholarly topics, and is passionate about public policy issues such as innovation, entrepreneurship and the use of new technologies in higher education. He has an undergraduate degree from St. Olaf College in Minnesota, where he won the George Weida Spohn Prize, and a PhD from the University of Virginia.

Atsusi “2c” Hirumi is an associate professor of Instructional Design and Technology at the University of Central Florida. Since 1995, Dr. Hirumi has concentrated his teaching, research and service on the design of online and hybrid learning environments. He led efforts at his former and current institution, and works with universities, community colleges, K12 schools, medical centers, and the military across the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Middle East to establish online and hybrid training, degree and certification programs. For the past five years, Dr. Hirumi has centered his research on the application of story, play and game to evoke emotions and spark imagination to advance experiential learning. Based on his work, Dr. Hirumi has published 28 refereed articles, 16 book chapters and has made over 100 presentations at international, national and state conferences. He recently edited a book on Playing Games in Schools and currently has a three book series on Grounded Designs for Online and Hybrid Learning in press. Awards include the Army Training dL Maverick Award for leadership in distance learning, the Texas Distance Learning Association award for Commitment to Excellence and Innovation, the UHCL Star Faculty Award, the Phi Delta Kappa Outstanding Practitioner Award, and he is a two time recipient of the WebCT Exemplary Online Course Award.

Kenneth G. Brown is a Professor of Management and Organizations and Henry B. Tippie Research Fellow at the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. His specialities include e-learning, motivation and self-regulation, and training design and evaluation. He is the current editor of the journal, Academy of Management Learning and Education. He has received several awards for teaching excellence, including the University of Iowa President and Provost’s Award and Faculty Advisory of the Year. He has also received research awards from the Society for Human Resource Management and the American Society for Training and Development and Forty Under Forty Award from the Corridor Business Journal. He holds a PhD in Psychology from Michigan State University.

Arshad Ahmad's current teaching and research interests are in Accelerated Learning Designs, Conceptual Change, Teaching Philosophies and Excellence in Teaching. He is the President of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education www.stlhe.ca and Vice-President of The International Consortium for Educational Development consisting of 23 member organizations worldwide, http://icedonline.net. Both STLHE and ICED strive to improve educational practice and human learning in post-secondary education. Arshad received his MBA and PhD in Educational Psychology at McGill University. He is presently Associate Professor of Finance in the John Molson School of Business (JMSB) at Concordia University. He is the recipient of several teaching and Professor of the Year awards from local and international universities. In 1992, he was recognized for leadership in teaching with a lifetime 3M National Teaching Fellowship - a program he coordinated for 10 years.

John P. Anchan is a Professor of Education and Acting Dean of the Faculty of Education, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Dr. Anchan has taught at the University of Alberta; served as the Executive Director of EISA (a non-profit, charitable, settlement organization in Edmonton); worked as the Director of Education, University of Winnipeg, and served for 5 years as the Executive Director of the University’s Centre for Teaching, Learning & Technology. In May 2011, he became the Associate Dean of Education and thereafter, in July 2012, assumed the position of Acting Dean. With expertise in physiology, education, and technology, Dr. Anchan has 33 years of teaching experience in K-12 and post-secondary education. He has taught in India, United Arab Emirates and Canada. Anchan’s areas of research include information technology and education, culture of technology, sociology of education, global education, culture studies, immigration, and history of Canadian education.

Recipient of research funding from all three levels of government (including tri-council awards), Anchan has also received funding from a number of foundations and funding bodies. He is a Research Affiliate of the Metropolis International and was one of the co-researchers in a large-scale Metropolis 10-year national study on the health of immigrant children in Canada. He has published many articles in refereed journals and is the primary author (with Shiva Halli) of the book, Exploring the Role of the Internet in Global Education; co-editor (with Michael Fullan and Eleoussa Polyzoi) of the book, Change Forces in Post-Communist Central Europe: Education in Transition. His current research agenda deals with mobile technologies and the impact of emerging technologies on education.

Dr. Anchan is the current Vice-President and incoming President of the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning. A comprehensive listing of publications and presentations available at: http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~janchan

Jim Babbage’s passion to share knowledge, take photographs, and manipulate images has led him to long-lasting careers in those areas as both a college professor and a creative professional. Jim has written hundreds of articles on Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and general web and photography topics for Community MX – and has spoken at Adobe MAX and D2WC. He has also written five books for Peachpit Press, focused on Adobe Fireworks. Currently, Jim is a Solutions Consultant for Adobe, supporting the Canadian educational sales team.

Patrick Blessinger is an academic researcher, innovator, and thought leader in the field of higher education and teaching & learning. Patrick has edited/authored seven textbooks on instructional technologies and he has taught over 160 college and university courses in the US and EU. He is the founder and Executive Director (CEO) of the International HETL Association, the founder and President of the Faculty Academy, and a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Meaning-Centered Education. Patrick is a Fulbright Scholar (US Department of State) and Governor's Teaching Fellow for the State of Georgia, US.

Philippe Caignon is the Chair of the Département d’études françaises at Concordia University where he teaches translation and terminology. He has a Ph.D. in linguistics and a M.A. in translation from Université de Montréal, and is a certified translator and terminologist. He seats on the editorial board of Circuit, the journal of the Ordre des traducteurs, terminologues et interprètes agréés du Québec, and on the Comité des programmes universitaires of the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche, de la Science.

Dr. Walcir Cardoso is an associate professor of Applied Linguistics at Concordia University. His main research interest is to explore how insights provided by theoretical phonology and sociolinguistics can be applied to the investigation of the variable patterns that characterize the speech of second language learners. He also conducts research on the effects of computer technology (e.g., clickers, text-to-speech synthesizers, automatic speech recognition) on the acquisition of non-native languages. He teaches a variety of courses in related areas. Outside of academia, he works as a brand name evaluator, and experiences other worlds in the form of music, poetry and cinema.

Saul Carliner is Concordia’s e-Learning Fellow as well as Director of the Education Doctoral Program and an Associate Professor in the Department of Education. His research and teaching focus on the design of materials for learning and communication in the workplace, as well as the management of groups that produce these materials. Among his 8 books are Designing e-Learning, Advanced Web-Based Training and The e-Learning Handbook.

Rob Cassidy is a lecturer in the Psychology department at Concordia. He also teaches college-level courses at Dawson and graduate-level courses at McGill, giving him a broad perspective on the development of competencies in higher education. Rob is active in the teaching and learning communities at Concordia and Dawson, and he received a student-based award for teaching excellence in 2010.

Rob’s interests in educational technology focuses on building learning environments and tools to help students think better about course content. He is also interested in the development of conceptions of teaching and learning in higher education faculty. He received his BS and PhD degrees in Neuroscience from Georgetown University.

Juan Carlos Castro is Assistant Professor of Art Education at Concordia University in Montreal. His current research examines how mobile media coupled with creative production networks knowledge in urban environments to create educational and civic engagement with teens and young adults.

As an Associate Librarian at Concordia University, Olivier Charbonneau is primarily interested in copyright issues as well as questions of open access and social media (Web 2.0). He is a doctoral student at the Faculté de droit, Université de Montréal. He has over 15 years of professional involvement in library and cultural communities. He holds two masters degrees from Université de Montréal, one in information sciences and another in law, as well as an undergraduate degree in commerce from McGill University. He has kept a research blog since 2005 in French at www.culturelibre.ca and a work blog since 2011 in English at OutFind.ca.

Mia Consalvo is Canada Research Chair in Game Studies and Design at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the author of Cheating: Gaining Advantage of Videogames, and is currently writing a book about Japan's influence on the videogame industry and game culture. Mia has published her work in Critical Studies in Media Communication, Games & Culture, Game Studies, Convergence, and many other journals. She has presented her work at professional as well as academic conferences including regular presentations at the Game Developers Conference. She is the President of the Digital Games Research Association, and has held positions at MIT, Ohio University, Chubu University in Japan and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Dr. Patrick Devey is the Chief Learning Officer at eConcordia, a not-for-profit subsidiary of Concordia University that designs and develops online courses and training programs. Dr. Devey earned his Ph.D. in educational technology at Concordia where he studied the retention patterns of undergraduate students in online courses. He has also served as a consultant for a variety of online training projects for small and medium-sized companies and teaches online courses at Concordia (Introduction to Statistics and Introduction to Training and Development). His research interests focus on successful practices in online course design, the communication patterns of online learners, and the training of new online instructors.

Penny Ellison is a native Montrealer and second of three generations to attend Concordia University, where she received her MBA in 1980. Her career began in banking, specifically forecasting and planning, in the 1970s. When her family expanded in the early 1980s, she left banking and took up teaching corporate finance full-time and part-time at UQAM, as well as Concordia, McGill, and Bishop's Universities.

But Penny's real love is personal financial planning – hence a third career as an independent financial planner since 1997. Aside from building a private practice, Penny was a key player in the development of financial planning programs at the Institute of Canadian Bankers, leading to the opportunity to teach financial professionals across Canada, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

As a pioneer in eLearning, Penny has taught Personal Finance at eConcordia for 10 years and developed a Federal Income Tax Seminar, offered since 2009. With decades of experience under her belt, Penny continues her association with Concordia and the Canadian Securities Institute.

Alex Enkerli is a community manager, freelance ethnographer, and part-time faculty at Concordia. Since he began teaching, in 1999, Alex has always tried to combine online and classroom activities. As a semi-nomadic academic, he had the opportunity to teach at eight institutions in Indiana, Massachusetts, Texas, New Brunswick, and Québec. Through these experiences, he was able to experiment with diverse tools and platforms in diverse contexts. His approach to teaching focuses on constructivism, peer learning, critical thinking, and reflexivity.

Sorel Friedman began her post-secondary studies at Bennington College. She received a B.A. in French Literature and Russian Language from the University of Manitoba in 1979 and an M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1986) in Comparative Literature from McGill University. She has taught English at the Université de Montréal for over 25 years, and since 1991, she has been the coordinator of English Language courses in the Faculté des arts et des sciences at U de M.

Karen Herland has been educating people from diverse backgrounds in community and classroom contexts for decades. This year marks her first attempt to do so virtually.

Jordan LeBel, is an Associate Professor at the Molson School of Business where he teaches Food Marketing and Experience Marketing and where he is the Director of the Luc Beauregard Center of Excellence in Communication Research. Dr. LeBel has received numerous teaching awards and recently became a 3M National Teaching Fellow. His research focuses on the psychology of food choices. His work on comfort foods and chocolate received extensive media coverage. He serves as Vice President of the Board of Youth Employment Services, a non profit organization helping young people find jobs and launch their business. He is a regular media commentator and currently pens the column "Parlons plaisirS" for the independent food magazine Le Must Alimentaire.

Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media poet, artist, and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he directs research/creation projects devising new means of creating and reading digital texts, developing systems for creative use of mobile technology and using virtual environments to assist Aboriginal communities in preserving, interpreting and communicating cultural histories. His other interests include computation as a creative material, emergent media theory and history, and methodologies for conducting art-led technology research. He is currently Associate Professor and Program Director of Computation Arts at Concordia University, Montreal.

Dr. Warren Linds has been a full-time faculty member at Concordia since August, 2004. Before beginning his graduate studies at the University of British Columbia in 1996, he spent 17 years working in international development education. Dr. Linds also worked for 6 years in community television, radio and newspapers in Vancouver and Newfoundland. He has had extensive experience in popular theatre and community development. This background has been critical to his teaching approach where he brings practical experiences and theoretical approaches together. Dr. Linds has published in the areas of group facilitation, anti-oppression and anti-racism pedagogy, the fostering of youth leadership, and alternative and arts-based approaches to qualitative research and documentation. He has presented at both national and international conferences in education, critical pedagogy, popular theatre and complexity theory.

Lisa Lynch is Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Concordia University’s Department of Journalism. She works broadly at the intersection between culture, technology, and political change, and teaches courses on emerging media forms and international media systems. Her writing on topics including Guantanamo, the representation of genetic science and post-cold war nuclear culture, and the circulation of classified documents has appeared in edited volumes and in journals including American Literary History, New Literary History , the Radical History Review, and Journalism Practice . She is currently at work on a book about how journalists negotiate technological changes in the collection of evidence.

Reham Mahdi started working as an IT Help Support Representative at Concordia University in 1997. In 1998, she was an Information Technology Trainer providing a variety of computer based training to faculty members, staff and students at Concordia University. Currently, she is working as a training coordinator at the Instructional and Information Technology Services Department. As a training coordinator she has been designing, organizing and providing different computer based workshops to the Concordia community for the last seven years.

Claude Martel is an assistant Educational Technology professor at Concordia University and a well-established practitioner in the Canadian training and education community. Over the last 25 years, he has held senior roles in large organizations like Pratt & Whitney Canada, Telus, Hydro-Québec and Fujitsu Consulting. As an international consultant, he also provided expertise to national and international organization including the Airport Council International and the International Civil Aviation Organization and managed technology projects in over 30 organizations. Claude is currently the chairman of CeLEA, the national association of E-Learning producer and has been a board director of multiple training and education organizations.

Madoka Gray-Mitsumune is a lecturer at Biology Department. She teaches subjects related to genetics, molecular biology and genomics. She teaches all levels, ranging from non-major biology to graduate-level Genomic courses. She grew up in Japan but immigrated to Canada as a graduate student. She obtained her Ph.D. at the University British Columbia, and did postdoctoral research at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and at Université de Montréal. Her research background is plant biotechnology. As a plant biologist, she used to watch her plants grow every day. Now she watches her students turning into young scientists.

Professor Emeritus Dr. Dennis Murphy has taught the Seminar in Propaganda in the Department of Communication Studies since the Fall of 1970 until his retirement in September of 2010. Since retirement, Dr. Murphy has taught the Propaganda course through eConcordia/Knowledge One three semesters a year. He has presented on a regular basis (1989 – 2003) on the topic of propaganda and ethics at the International Institute for Advanced Studies Annual Symposium held yearly in Baden Baden, Germany.

Jeanette Novakovich, an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, teaches a variety of professional writing courses. She has a master’s degree in marketing from Texas A&M, an M.A. in English from the University of South Dakota, and currently she’s is a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Technology at Concordia University. She has taught English business writing for Penn State University’s World Campus and designed an E-Learning course for the Canadian government through UQAM. Her research focuses on social media technology in higher education--for example, multi-media narrative strategies and blogging as a stimulating way to improve student-writing skills. She has constructed a highly active community blog, Montrealites, and in her spare time, she bike-rides all over Montreal.

Luis Ochoa has extensive experience in teaching Spanish as a foreign language and coordinates Spanish language courses in the Department of Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistics (CMLL). These responsibilities are closely related to research on the teaching and learning of Spanish as a foreign language.

Bhuvan C. Pant teaches in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Concordia University. Professor Pant holds a Ph.D. from the University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K. He has over 40 years of teaching and research experience acquired in England, India, Scotland, Holland, United States and Canada. He has 36 Research Papers, 10 Contract Research and Consulting Projects, 2 Patents and 10 Scientific Reviews to his credit. Bhuvan C. Pant is a member of the American Chemical Society and Ordre des Chimistes du Québec. He is listed in the Directory of Canadian Environmental Experts and Marquis Who's Who in the World.

David Price is a master's student in Educational Technology at Concordia University, teaching assistant for the online course EDUC298A Educational Communication, and research assistant for the editor-in-chief of the IEEE journal "Transactions on Professional Communication."

Bill Reimer is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. He has been teaching the eConcordia course entitled Canadian Society every semester since the summer of 2008. From 1997 to 2008 he directed a Canadian national research project on the New Rural Economy which included 13 universities, 35 partners, and 32 rural communities from all parts of Canada (New Rural Economy). His publications deal with community capacity-building, social support networks, social capital, social cohesion, municipal finances, the economy and the household, rural immigration, and the informal economy. His current research examines changes in rural communities, rural-urban interdependence, comparative regional policy, rural immigration, and the impacts of wildfires on communities. Details can be found via http://billreimer.ca.

Jean-Paul Remillieux has been teaching in the field of computer networking to adult learners for the past 15 years. He is also Director of Instructor Services and Educational Technologies at the McGill School of Continuing Studies. His responsibilities include supervising the design, development and delivery of online and blended courses and programs.

Dr. Luis Rodrigues received his PhD from Stanford University, Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2002 and his MASc and “Licenciatura” from the Technical University of Lisbon, Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1997 and 1995, respectively. From 2000 to 2002 he was a visiting student of MIT. His research is focused on developing and implementing embedded algorithms for advanced guidance, avionics navigation and control systems for aerospace vehicles. He has published 17 journal papers and over 50 conference papers and has received over 270 citations for his publications.

Dr. Julian Schofield, (PhD Columbia) teaches courses primarily on security as part of the international relations sub-discipline in political science at Concordia University. He has been teaching POLI 216 since 2001 (over 30 times), on three different platforms at Concordia, and POLI 298H since 2007 (16 times). His research is focused on South, Southeast and East Asian security, particularly Pakistan, where he has conducted field research five times since 1999. His principal publications include Militarization and War (Palgrave 2007) and Pakistan: Geopolitics (Pluto, 2012). He has published on the pedagogical application of simulations to training, did so for over a decade while an operations officer in a reserve engineering regiment, and was engaged by the USN to provide his simulations expertise.

Steven Shaw is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Concordia. His areas of research and expertise include content management, technology-based strategies to support learning and evaluation.

In the mid nineties he was involved in the development of the first large-scale on-line learning programs delivered in corporate Canada, as well as the first federal public service e-learning initiatives. He is also a co-founder of Eedo Knowledgeware Corp, which developed the leading enterprise learning content management system worldwide, ForceTen. The platform was acquired by IBM in 2012.

Steven has worked with Fortune 500 organizations and the largest public sector employers in the UK, US and Canada, as well as numerous educational institutions and associations, implementing new learning technologies and related strategies.

Dr. Paul Shrivastava, is the David O’Brien Distinguished Professor and Director of the David O’Brien Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Concordia University. Dr. Shrivastava founded several private companies, including eSocrates, Inc. an e-learning and knowledge management company. He teaches online courses using the eConcordia and Moodle platforms. He received his Ph. D. from the University of Pittsburgh. He has published 17 books and over 100 articles in scholarly journals. Before Concordia, he worked at New York University, Bucknell University and was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Kyoto University.

Robert Soroka has been teaching online courses for over 10 years. He is a faculty member and a Coordinator at Concordia’s School of Extended Learning and has taught extensively at Concordia’s JMSB. He was the chief developer of the online Marketing Practices Certificate Program at SEL. He is a winner of both the Distinguished Teaching Award (JMSB) and the Professor of the Year Award (McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management.) Professor Soroka has a varied background as a criminal lawyer, professor, marketing analyst and consultant, TV and radio personality, conference speaker, and playwright.

Denise Stockley has been a member of the Queen’s Centre for Teaching and Learning since January 2001 and is the Acting Director. She is also an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education. Denise is well known at Queen’s for her extensive educational development work and the support she has provided to faculty, staff and students. In recent years, her research has focused on educational development, e-learning, graduate supervision, and graduate student perspectives. She is the principal investigator and co-investigator on several peer-reviewed SSHRC, NSERC and CIHR grants. In addition, Denise serves on the Executive Committee for the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning Association.

Dr. Szabo is Professor of Mathematics at Concordia University. He was educated at Oxford University, where he read Modern Greats, and McGill University, where he obtained an MSc and PhD in Mathematics. He is one of the most senior professors at the university but, nevertheless, continues to be a passionate and innovative teacher who has enriched his teaching with the help of technology for over twenty years.

Dr. Szabo's contributions to teaching, learning, and research have been recognized both nationallly and internationally. His recent awards include the Wolfram Innovator Award for my contributions to innovative ways of using Mathematica in the classroom, the Concordia Award for Innovative Teaching Excellence, the Faculty of Arts and Science Excellence in Teaching Award, and the Invaluable Service Award from the Concordia Institute for Cooperative Education.

Dr. Szabo is an accomplished author of several books, including two editions of the Actuaries' Survival Guide, published by Elsevier Academic Press, and several books on the teaching of linear algebra with Maple and Mathematica, also published or to be published by Elsevier Academic Press.

Dr. Szabo has participated and spoken at national and international conferences about teaching and learning with technology and is currently pioneering the Laptop Learning Project sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Science at Concordia University.

Anne Wade, Manager and Information Specialist, Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, Concordia University and a sessional lecturer in Education for 20 years. Wade is currently Coordinator of the Inquiry Strategies for the Information Society in the Twenty-first Century (ISIS-21) software development project, and former President of the Eastern Canada Chapter, SLA and the Quebec Library Association.

Jared Wiercinski is Digital Services & Outreach Librarian at Concordia University, where he is the liaison librarian for the departments of Music and Contemporary Dance. He is Project Manager for Concordia Libraries' streaming media service and is a collaborator on a three-year SSHRC IG project entitled “SpokenWeb: Developing a Comprehensive Web-Based Digital Spoken Word Archive for Literary Research.” http://spokenweb.concordia.ca/