Executive
The Association is managed by an Executive Committee elected every two years from Association members.
 President
Dr Rod Sims
Principal Consultant, Knowledgecraft
Adjunct Professor, Instructional Design for Online Learning, Capella University
Rod Sims has over 30 years experience in the computer and education sectors, specialising in the design and development of effective interactive learning resources. Rod has held senior academic posts at the University of Technology Sydney, Southern Cross University, Deakin University and QANTM Education. Rod is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society (ACS), a Fellow and Past-President of the Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ASCILITE) and past Executive Vice-President of the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction (IBSTPI). Rod is currently active supervising doctoral students and consulting to universities on unit renewal and online learning design.
 Vice President
Mr Sam Meredith
Manager Online Projects
Educational Developments Unit
TAFE NSW - New England Institute
Sam is based at Armidale Ccampus of TAFE. He has had 30 years teaching and management experience in distance and flexible education within the VET sector and higher education at QUT in Brisbane and UNE Teaching and Learning Centre in Armidale. In 2008-09 he was seconded to the Connected Classrooms Program (CCP), NSW DET in Sydney implementing videoconferencing and interactive whiteboard facilities to 2240 public schools in NSW, to deliver 10MB minimum scalable bandwidth to all public schools and TAFE campuses, DET blog, wiki and personal and shared storage, and Google’s Gmail to all students.
His current interests include learning design, mobile learning and use of collaborative technologies in distance education. He has worked as a consultant overseas in educational technologies including work at University of the South Pacific and Universiti Brunei Darussalam for the Commonwealth of Learning (COL).
Sam was an Australian National Training Authority Flexible Learning Leader in 2002.
 Executive Editor, Distance Education
Associate Professor Som Naidu,
Charles Sturt University
Email: Som Naidu
(Appointed by Nomination)
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.
 Publications Officer
Mr Stephen Relf
Educational Designer
Centre for Enhancing Learning and Teaching
Charles Sturt University
Stephen Relf has been in the Distance Education industry for about twenty years having started his career at the Darling Downes Institute of Advanced Education, Toowoomba before moving to the Mitchell College of Advanced Education in Bathurst before it formed Charles Sturt University.
He has been involved in consultancies for the University with the Teachers college in the Solomons Islands; University of Newcastle; Royal College of Nursing; Fairfax Publishing; and Access Computer Mediated Communication. The last consultation was for the production of an online course called 'Media skills online' which in 1999 was the Winner of Education and Training Award, conducted by The Australian Information Industry Association.
His research interests are about writing distance education online. At the moment he is exploring a model of literacy that centres the social and technological components as central to literacy encapsulated in the concept metaphor l(IT)eracy. Pedagogic interests centre on working with academic staff eclectic approaches and assisting an articulation of their issues working on Bernstein's concept of changing the horizontal discourses of pedagogy to vertical specialist discourses. His preferred pedagogical approach is a social constructivist pedagogy.
 Committee Member
Alison Whitley
Director
Off-Campus Learning Centre
Monash University
Alison has been involved in the development and provision of adult education within both the higher education and vocational education sectors for almost 20 years. Alison has project managed the development of flexible learning online “toolboxes” and has managed many national and international educational programmes for government departments, private organisations, Indigenous communities and professional groups. One of the most interesting and challenging projects on which Alison worked was the online provision of courses to cohorts of students in four countries within the African sub-Sahara (Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania), whilst an Associate Director at Curtin University. Alison is now Director, Off Campus Learning Centre at Monash University.
 Committee Member
Trish Andrews
Education Designer
University of Queensland
Trish Andrews has worked in the area of higher education for more than 15 years. She has considerable experience in the areas of open, distance, flexible and blended learning and has a strong background in research and development relating to new and emerging learning environments. She has extensive experience in supporting innovative curriculum development with a particular focus on integrating technologies into higher education programs. Trish has a particular interest in learning spaces and mobile learning. Trish has had many grants in relation to innovations in teaching and learning Current grants include an ALTC leadership grant exploring rich media and an ALTC priority projects grant developing a comprehensive evaluation model for learning spaces. Trish is currently working as a Senior Research Fellow on the DEHub project at UNE.
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