Welcome to the ODLAA website

This website offers a new public face for ODLAA and spearheads an expanding member-only area.

In this first phase of the member area development ODLAA members are supplied with a log in to access pages that are locked to the public. Over coming weeks and months the content available in those pages will grow.

In future phases it is expected to enable members to modify their own member details online, provide permission to release contact details to other members and view a Member Directory incorporating photos, and conduct electronic transactions such as joining ODLAA, renewing membership, or registering for events.

Members are invited to offer suggestions for improvement or volunteer their time to work on particular areas by using the email feedback from (accessed from the footer below).

Member Spotlight

Som Naidu is currently Associate Professor and Director of Teaching and Learning Quality Enhancement and Evaluation Services in the Division of Learning and Teaching Services at Charles Sturt University in NSW, Australia.

Dr Naidu has been Executive Editor of Distance Education since 1997. Along with serving on the editorial advisory boards of several related journals in the field, he is a co-series editor of the Routledge Book Series on Open and Flexible Learning, which is also published by Taylor & Francis Group.

Dr Naidu possesses undergraduate qualifications in Education from Waikato in New Zealand and graduate qualifications in Educational Technology from Montreal, Canada. His career in the field of distance education and educational technology dates back to the early 1980s. Since then he has worked in various roles in these fields in the South Pacific Islands, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA.

From 1997 to October 2008, Som was Associate Professor of Educational Technology and Multimedia Education at the University of Melbourne and prior to that, from 1992 to 1998, he was a Senior Lecturer in Instructional Design and Technology at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia.

Dr Naidu's main research interest is on approaches to learning experience design in technology-enhanced educational environments. His publications in this area include several books, book chapters, journal articles and conference papers.

His professional consultancies in this area include numerous educational development projects in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore. Most of these projects are being sponsored by the Commonwealth of Learning. Prominent among these is the design and development of a Master of Arts in Teacher Education program at the Open University of Sri Lanka, and a Bachelor of e-Teacher Education program for a consortium of universities in the State of Maharastra, India.

ODLAA AGM

The next Annual General Meeting of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia Inc
will be an online meeting scheduled for
8 - 12 February 2010.

The agenda, papers and details of the process are circulated a month before the meeting via the members' email list.

Any member who has not already received preliminary notification of the meeting is advised to ensure that their email details registered with the ODLAA Secretariat are up to date.