OTESSA Conference
Online May 16-20, 2022
Call for Proposals Closed.
Late submissions will be processed and accepted based on available room in the program.
Be inspired…
Join us to hear from the following scholars and practitioners as they share about our conference theme Critical Change.
Keynote Speakers
Martin Weller
Martin Weller is Professor of educational technology at the UK Open University, and Director of the GO-GN project, a global network of OER researchers. He is the chair of the Open University’s ‘Open Degree’, a modular, flexible multidisciplinary programme, which is the largest undergraduate programme in the UK. He chaired the Open University’s first major e-learning course in 1999 with nearly 15,000 students. He is the director of the Open Education Research Hub, and a former president of the Association for Learning Technology. He has authored several books including The Digital Scholar, The Battle for Open and 25 Years of Ed Tech which are available under open licences. His new book, Metaphors of Ed Tech, will be published in 2022 by Athabasca University Press. He is also co-editor of the open access journal, JIME (Journal of Interactive Media in Education). Weller’s interests are in digital scholarship, open education and the impact of new technologies, and he writes a blog about these topics at blog.edtechie.net
Sherri Spelic
Sherri Spelic teaches elementary physical education at American International School Vienna. She has written extensively on topics related to education, identity and power and among other things publishes a monthly social justice newsletter for educators: Bending The Arc. Check out her book of essays, Care At The Core or find her on Twitter @edifiedlistener.
Maha Bali
Maha Bali is Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the 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 and 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 Reflecting Allowed and tweets @bali_maha
Brenna Clarke Gray
Invited Speakers
Watch this space for more announcements!
Enilda Romero-Hall
Dr. Enilda Romero-Hall is an Associate Professor of Education and the Graduate Coordinator of the Instructional Design and Technology (IDT) master program at The University of Tampa. She recently joined the curation team of the Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online guide. Dr. Romero-Hall focuses her research on emergent and innovative technologies that help to promote, practice, and implement effective and efficient learning experiences in P-16 education and industry. Throughout her academic career, Dr. Romero-Hall has collaborated in several multidisciplinary research projects on digital media for education and training. Her research interests include faculty and learners’ digital literacy and preparedness, networked learning in online social communities, and the design and development of interactive multimedia. She also publishes on topics related to innovative research methods in learning design and technology; culture, technology, and education; and feminist pedagogies.
Matt Bower
Matt Bower is a professor in the School of Education at Macquarie University, who specialises in the innovative use of technology for learning purposes. He is particularly interested in how contemporary technologies such as augmented reality, web-based tools, virtual worlds, social networking, immersive virtual reality 3D design & printing software and so on can be most effectively used to support cognitive development and collaborative learning. Matt has over 100 peer reviewed publications in the area of technology-enhanced learning design, teacher education, and computing education. In 2021 he was one of four recipients of an Australian Award for University Teaching Excellence, and has received several other national and institutional teaching awards. His teaching strongly emphasises the importance of adopting a research-driven approach in education. He is the lead author of two A1 research books “Blended synchronous learning – A handbook for educators” and “Design of technology-enhanced learning – integrating research and practice”, the latter of which won the 2018 Association for Educational Communications and Technology Design and Development Outstanding Book Award. Matt is also the Chair of the Australian Technologies Teacher Educators Network (ATTEN) and the Macquarie University Learning Technology Research Cluster (MQLTRC). @mattgbower
Trevor MacKenzie
Trevor MacKenzie is an experienced teacher, author, keynote speaker and inquiry consultant who has worked in schools throughout Australia, Asia, North America, South Africa and Europe. Trevor’s passion is in supporting schools in implementing inquiry-based learning practices. He is a highly regarded speaker known for his heartfelt storytelling, kind demeanour, and student-first philosophy.
Trevor’s graduate research focused on identifying and removing the barriers to implementing inquiry-based learning in the K-12 setting. He is an inquiry practitioner currently as a teacher with the Greater Victoria School District in Victoria, Canada. He has three publications: Dive into Inquiry; Inquiry Mindset Elementary Edition; Inquiry Mindset Assessment Edition; all published by Elevate Books Edu. He has vast experience supporting schools across several years in implementation strategies in public schools, international schools, and International Baccalaureate programmes (PYP/MYP/DP).
Trevor MacKenzie is an award winning English teacher who believes that it is a magical time to be an educator. By increasing student agency over learning, weaving in strong pedagogy, transformative tech use, and sharing learning to a public audience, Trevor’s learners are ready to take on important roles in the 21st century.
Rescheduled to 2023.
AJ Boston
Arthur “AJ” Boston is a Scholarly Communication Librarian at Murray State University and coordinator for the MSU Office of Research and Creative Activity. His writings and presentations often incorporate popular culture to make scholarly communication a more accessible topic. Boston is an outgoing Library Publishing Coalition Fellow and incoming SPARC COAPI Steering Committee Member. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8590-4663 / @aj_boston
Jess Mitchell
Jess is Senior Manager, Research + Design at the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University in Toronto. Which is a meaningless title that tells you nothing about her. Here’s what you need to know: Jess is often a misfit, values a critical perspective, and appreciates the messy parts of human interaction. Additionally, she has a fondness for things in 3s and a background in Ethics.
Terry Anderson
Terry Anderson PhD is a Professor Emeritus and former Canada Research Chair in the Centre for Distance Education and the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Centre at Athabasca University. Terry has published widely in the area of distance education and educational technology and has co-authored or edited 10 books and over 100 peer reviewed papers. He is Editor Emeritus with the widely cited journal International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL).
Terry’s blog the “Virtual Canuck” is accessible at virtualcanuck.ca. Twitter @Terguy.
Sadik Shahadu
Sadik is a researcher and Co-Founder of the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group. He is currently serving as the West African Indigenous Language Coordinator at Art+Feminism, a steering committee member of the Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub, and have previously served as a volunteer on the Wikimedia project grants committee. Outside the Wikimedia community, he is a Mozilla Open Leader X fellow, a MozFest wrangler and ambassador for the Mozilla festival 2022.
In addition to that, he works with several open leaders and OER experts on the UNESCO ‘Open Education for a Better World’ program as an advisory board member. He is currently serving on an advisory role for Wiki Tongues‘s language revitalization accelerator and Rising Voices’ language digital activism programs.
As a researcher and a digital language activist, he works with individuals and organizations interested in supporting indigenous languages and cultures on the internet. He was a program facilitator and panel chair for Hack4OpenGLAM at the 2021 Creative Commons global summit.
Rescheduled to 2023.
Nadia Naffi
Nadia Naffi is an Assistant Professor in the Educational Technology program at Université Laval’s Faculty of Education. Her teaching mandate centers on equipping current and future experts in educational technology to meet the training and development needs of a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral, multi-generational, evolving, and global workforce in the AI era. Naffi holds the Chair in Educational Leadership in Innovative Pedagogical Practices in Digital Contexts – National Bank and co-leads the Education and Empowerment axis of the international observatory on the societal impacts of AI and digital technologies (OBVIA) where she focuses on the ethical, critical, responsible and sustainable application of disruptive technologies in lifelong learning for the future of work. She is affiliated with the CRIFPE, CRIRES, GRIIPTIC, CRIEVAT and the IID. Amongst her research projects, she is currently leading two SSHRC funded studies. The first examines elements of course design and evaluation strategies that promote high-quality, equitable and inclusive education, and take into consideration students’ mental health, in hybrid, flexible, or 100% online modalities for the postCOVID19 era in higher education. The second explores youth digital agency as one strategy for counterbalancing disinformation spread on social media through deepfakes.
Beyhan Farhadi
Tony Bates
Dr. Tony Bates is a Senior Advisor at the Chang School of Continuing Education, Ryerson University, Toronto and is also a Research Associate at Contact North, Ontario. He is Chair of the Board of the Canadian Digital Learning Research Association and is a consultant assisting with the implementation of the British Columbia Institute of Technology’s e-Learning Strategy.
He was a founding staff member of the British Open University, becoming a full professor in educational media research in 1984. In 1989, he became Executive Director, Strategic Planning and Information Technology at the Open Learning Agency, Vancouver. From 1995 to 2003 he was Director of Distance Education and Technology at UBC. He has worked as a consultant in the design and management of online and distance learning in over 40 countries.
He is the author of twelve books, including his latest online, open textbook for faculty and instructors, ‘Teaching in a Digital Age’, which has been downloaded over 500,000 times and translated into ten languages. He has honorary degrees from two Canadian universities (Laurentian and Athabasca) and four foreign universities for his research into online learning and distance education.
Giulia Forsythe
Giulia Forsythe is the Associate Director, Centre for Pedagogical Innovation at Brock University where she supports the lofty goals of education to transform lives through high quality teaching, learning, research, and a commitment to equity, justice, and accessibility situated within Niagara, Ontario, and beyond. She is a champion for open education that serves to “honour different ways of knowing and demonstrating knowledge.
Stephanie Moore
Stephanie Moore is Assistant Professor in the Organization, Information and Learning Sciences program at the
University of New Mexico where she teaches adult learning, online learning and assessment, and ethics for
learning and workplace technology.
Prior to joining UNM in 2020, she was Assistant Professor in Instructional Design and Technology at the
University of Virginia where she led the effort to build their first online learning programs, one of which is now
ranked #3 in the country. In 2018, she received the Casteen Teaching Fellowship, named for the former
president of the University of Virginia, and accompanying grant from the Institute for Practical Ethics and Public
Life.
She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computing in Higher Education and has served as President of the
Division for Systemic Change in the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) and
as President of the AECT Foundation.
Across her career, she has worked as helped to build and lead effective online learning solutions that have won
multiple awards and recognitions such as the AACTE Innovation of the Year Award and the Leadership in
Education award presented by the Southern Piedmont Technology Council.
She presently consults with clients on a range of projects including online learning, the use of technology for
learning, and organizational performance improvement; past consultation includes work with the World Bank on
the role of education in areas affected by conflict or crisis and work with a federal agency on career-spanning
learning and development of human capital.
Her areas of expertise include online and blended learning, educational / learning technologies, accessibility
and UDL, instructional planning and development, educational system strategic planning and strategic
technology integration, and ethics in design and planning.
Verena Roberts
Dr. Verena Roberts is a passionate online and blended K-12 educator, an instructional designer and consultant who completed her EdD in Learning Sciences with a focus on K-12 Open Educational Practices with the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. Verena is an Adjunct Assistant professor with the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary and works as an Instructional Designer with Thompson Rivers University. She was previously a Learning Designer with the UBC ETS team, an Educational Specialist with the Callysto project (Cybera), and a high school online teacher and EdTech specialist with Rocky View Schools as well as a k-12 teacher in multiple other districts in Alberta, BC and Quebec. She was a 2018-2019 OER Research fellow and proud Global Open Graduate Network (#GO-GN) alumni. Verena has presented at a wide variety of national and international conferences and she is the 2013 iNACOL Innovative Online and Blended Learning Practice Award Recipient and the 2019 CNIE K-12 Excellence and Innovation in the Integration of Technology.
Simon Collin
Simon Collin is a professor in the Faculté des sciences de l’éducation at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). He holds the Canada Research Chair on Digital Equity in Education. He is a member of the Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la formation et la profession enseignante (CRIFPE). He is also affiliated with the “Education and Empowerment” axis of the Observatoire international sur les impacts sociétaux de l’IA et du numérique (OBVIA) and the Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire sur l’intégration pédagogique des technologies de l’information et de la communication (GRIIPTIC). His research interests focus on the issues of equity and democratization of technology in education, which he studies at the intersection of interdisciplinary work in technology and critical theories. The last book he directed is Le numérique en éducation: approches critiques (2022).
Lyn Trudeau
Lyn Trudeau is an Anishinaabe’Kwe from Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation, belonging to Eagle Clan. She is a PhD Candidate in Social/Cultural/Political Contexts of Education, and instructor at Brock University, Canada. She has experience creating culturally responsive curriculum for remote Indigenous learners: asynchronous and synchronous. She feels it is important to honour her cultural background; therefore, embeds Indigenous knowledge and ways of being in her classrooms and research endeavours. Lyn is also an artistic scholar who engages the visual presence and representation within her works to support cultural survivance.
Ann-Louise Davidson
Dr. Ann-Louise Davidson is an Associate Professor in Educational Technology and holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Maker Culture. She is the Director of the Innovation Lab and Associate Director of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology where she also directs #MilieuxMake, the Milieux makerspace initiative. She created Education Makers, a community of educators, students and community members who strive to develop the emergent profile of maker education with an edge. She co-designs innovative learning experiences and concepts that draw on crucial themes, such as global issues, health, sustainability and youth motivation, through concrete maker activities such as building gaming tables, gamepads, wearable computing, pedagogical robotics, computational thinking and 3D printing, while engaging marginalized communities. She developed an international reputation for her disruptive pedagogical innovations with emergent and digital technologies. She is currently involved in several institutional projects including a micro-credentials initiative. She has published numerous papers on learning with technology, recent issues with digital technologies, has engaged in research creation, and has given keynote speeches in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.
Terry Greene
Terry Greene is a Senior eLearning Designer at Trent University. He is host of Gettin’ Air: The Open Pedagogy Podcast on VoicEd Radio. He holds a B.Ed. in Elementary Education from the University of Alberta and a M.Sc. in Instructional Design & Technology from the University of North Dakota. He is interested in both the cutting and trailing edges of uses for technology in education. Especially those that increase the human element in technology-enabled learning. Hint, hint, those are probably the more open ones.
#tresdancing Short Film Screening and Q&A
The sudden shift from in-person to online classes due to COVID 19 has led to increasingly invasive surveillance technologies in education, including the use of problematic online proctoring software purportedly aimed at addressing academic integrity.
#tresdancing, the fourth film in the Screening Surveillance series, speculates on the effects of escalating surveillance and control through educational technology. In this near future fiction narrative, a young person has little choice as they are forced to ramp up their engagement with a new, experimental technology in order to make up for a failing grade.
sava saheli singh
Dr. sava saheli singh (she/her) is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the nexus of media, surveillance, speculative futures, and intersectional marginality, with a strong commitment to community-based public scholarship. She is currently a Research Fellow of Surveillance, Society, and Technology with the Centre for Law, Technology and Society at the University of Ottawa, which is located within the traditional territory of the Algonquin Nation. As a postdoctoral fellow (first with the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University and then with the eQuality Project and the AI+Society Initiative at uOttawa) sava created the SSHRC and OPC funded multi award winning knowledge translation project, Screening Surveillance – a film series for which she co-produced four speculative fiction short films, co-writing one of them. This public education project calls attention to the potential human consequences of technologically mediated surveillance. The films have been screened at film festivals, international conferences, workshops, global public events and in classrooms across the world. She is also working on a research project that examines how Canadian teachers’ use of learning technologies has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tim Maughan
Tim Maughan is the script writer of #tresdancing. Tim Maughan is an author and journalist using both fiction and non-fiction to explore issues around cities, class, culture, technology, and the future. His work has appeared on the BBC, New Scientist, MIT Technology Review, One Zero, and Vice/Motherboard. His debut novel INFINITE DETAIL was published by FSG in 2019, and selected by The Guardian as their Science Fiction and Fantasy book of the year and shortlisted for the Locus Magazine Award for Best First Novel. He also uses fiction to help clients as diverse as IKEA and the World Health Organization to think critically about the future. He often collaborates with artists and filmmakers, and has had work shown at the V&A, Columbia School of Architecture, the Vienna Biennale, and on Channel 4. He currently lives in Canada.
Hingman Leung
Hingman Leung is the director of #tresdancing. Whether it’s through her work in health research or as community builder and filmmaker, Hingman is driven by the core value of making an impact for social good. Hingman is a multiple award-winning director, with her most recent short film, Curbside Pickup, reaching top three on CBC’s Short Film Face Off. Her work has appeared on CBC, Apartment613, and Rogers TV, collaborating with a variety of local arts and culture organizations as a videographer and editor. In 2020, she was named by CBC as one of ten Trailblazers in Ottawa for her work in representation in media.
Lesley Marshall
Lesley Marshall is the co-producer of #tresdancing. Lesley Marshall is a US/Canadian intermedia artist currently working on independent a/v projects with her company MAVN (Marshall Audio Visual Network). An award-winning filmmaker with films appearing in 40 festivals nationally and internationally, music videos by Lesley have been featured on Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Vice, Exclaim!, Brooklyn Vegan, Aux, Rookie Mag, Stereogum, ClashMag and UPROXX. Lesley’s cinematography and editing of the 2019 Inside Out selected webseries “Village Legacy Project” can be seen on OutTV. Projection art by Lesley has been performed at the National Art Centre, Montreal Jazz Fest, and CentrePHI. Stay tuned for upcoming media art presentations of Lesley and collaborator Ashley Bowa’s Green Gazing, a touring project combining movement, meditation, video and plants.
Social Program
Online Bhangra Dance Class
Gurdeep Pandher of Yukon
Gurdeep’s videos have, collectively, been watched over fifty million times from various platforms. His work has been published/used by The Governor-General of Canada, Canadian High Commissions, The Prime Minister of Canada, Air Canada, Department of Canadian National Defence, Royal Canadian Navy, RCMP, Department of Canadian Heritage, BBC News, CBC, The Globe and Mail, CTV News, USA Today, SBS Australia, Toronto Star, Twitter Moments Canada, diverse media and community organizations.
Gurdeep is active on Twitter @GurdeepPandher, YouTube, and his website.
Special Musical Guest
Jon Dron
If you’ve ever mistakenly taken a degree in philosophy in Thatcher’s Britain during the early 1980s, then you’ll most likely recall that your employment prospects upon graduation were very bleak. You probably therefore did what any sensible person would do: you spent the next decade or so singing swing for a living in bars, hotels, and night clubs. At least, that’s what Jon Dron did. Nowadays he spends most of his paid hours being a professor and a researcher in technology & learning but, once in a Blue Moon (a song that he sometimes sings, as it happens), he picks up his guitar and performs once more for a crowd. And that’s precisely what he will be doing at the OTESSA22 conference.
Mindfulness
Kendra Coupland
Kendra Coupland is a sādhaka (one who is on the path to self actualization), meditation coach, yoga teacher, and multi-disciplinary artist living and working on unceded Coast Salish territory. In particular, the traditional lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, səl̓ílwətaɬ, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm and Stó:lō people.
After studying and practicing yoga for 7 years, in 2017 Kendra was officially initiated into the yogic teaching tradition by Swami Vidyanand while studying Transformational Yoga in South India. In 2019 Kendra completed the Yoga Outreach Core Training for Trauma Informed Yoga and in 2020 she continued her studies with Swami Vidyanand and was certified and registered with Yoga Alliance International and Yoga Alliance of India as a Yoga Grandmaster (a yoga teacher’s teacher.)
Experiencing the world as a queer, neurodivergent, Black-mixed woman, and survivor of childhood sexual violence Kendra brings a compassionate, trauma-informed, and intersectional framework to her practice. She is constantly striving to create safer spaces for folks who experience marginalization and systemic violence to practice self-liberation and self-actualization within the context of a larger, and oftentimes oppressive community.
Beats
Dr. Jones
Professor of musicology, expert in the mix and, how does one say it… obtainer of rare recordings?
Dr. Jones (aka DJ106) has been braving the data stream since 2007, spinning for the edtech community out of the virtual studios of #ds106radio. Taking the show on the road for conferences, workshops and educationally minded chair dancers the world over. Expect the unexpected when Dr. Jones is at the controls.
Twitter: @drjones106
Website: https://dj106.ca/boom/
Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/drjones106/
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/dr-jones-106
Sponsors
Sponsors play an important role in our association and events as they allow us to reach bigger goals and support our community in ways we could not do so without. Below you can find current information about the incredible sponsors, who have elevated us at OTESSA.
Please visit our Becoming a Sponsor page for information about our sponsorship policy and we welcome potential sponsors to complete our Sponsor Form or to reach out to us at admin@otessa.org for more information.
We would like to extend a deep appreciation for the support of our sponsors, who are making the formation of OTESSA and our conference possible! Thank you!!
Advocates
Partners
Friends
