Prof. Asha Kanwar became President and Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) on 1 June 2012. She has served COL for nine years, first as an Education Specialist – Higher Education and Policy and then as its Vice President for six years. Before joining COL, Prof. Kanwar was a consultant in open and distance learning at UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education in Africa (BREDA) in Dakar, Senegal and Pro-Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University. She has over 30 years of experience in teaching, research and administration.
Ph.D., Stanford University, Administration and Policy Analysis, 1991 Research Interests: Diversity and educational reform; variable consequences of specific educational policies and practices for students traditionally marginalized by mainstream educational settings; collaborative approaches to school leadership and educational decision-making. Professor Merchant conducts ongoing consultation on educational leadership and training world-wide, including a number of Chinese universities such as Eastern China Normal University in Shanghai and Peking University in Beijing. Her keynote speech would focus on educational leadership core qualities, characteristics and competencies across various cultural contexts and their applications to open and distance education.
Professor Gilly Salmon has been a learning innovator for more than 20 years and is one of the world’s leading thinkers in digital and blended learning. She researches and publishes widely on the themes of innovation and change in Higher Education and the exploitation of new technologies of all kinds in the service of learning. She is internationally renowned for her significant contributions to education futures, including research, innovation, program design, teaching methods and the use of new technologies. Professor Salmon, as of October 2014, has taken up the role as the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Education Innovation, at the University of Western Australia. She was previously Pro Vice-Chancellor of Learning Transformations at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia Prior to her Swinburne appointment, Professor Salmon was Executive Director and Professor (Learning Futures) at the Australian Digital Futures Institute, University of Southern Queensland, Australia. She was previously Professor of E-learning and Learning Technologies, and Head of the Beyond Distance Research Alliance and the Media Zoo, at the University of Leicester in the UK, and prior to that with the UK Open University Business School.
Diana Laurillard is Professor of Learning with Digital Technologies, leading externally-funded research projects on developing a learning design support environment for teachers, and on developing software interventions for learners with low numeracy and dyscalculia. She was previously Head of the e-Learning Strategy Unit at the Department for Education and Skills, and served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for learning technologies and teaching at The Open University. Her book Rethinking university teaching: A conversational framework for the effective use of learning technologies is one of the most widely cited in the field.
Prof Li Chen is a PhD supervisor. She is vice president of Beijing Normal University and the executive director of Beijing Institute for The Learning City at Beijing Normal University. She is the president of Society of International Chinese in Educational Technology (SICET) . She is the leader of master program and PhD program of Distance Education in Beijing Normal University. She is in charge of the course The Foundation of Distance Education for undergraduate student in Educational Technology. Her research is mainly focusing on Interaction principle in Distance learning, and policy research in Lifelong learning and Distance Learning. She is deep engaged in policy consulting in Distance Education and lifelong learning. She has authored and published more than 10 books and 100 papers.
