University of Kansas Medical Center

Darrin Cheney is the Director of Teaching and Learning Technologies at KU Medical Center. His department is responsible for consulting with faculty in the design and delivery of quality instruction – both in the classroom and online. His department also assists faculty, departments, and schools in selecting and integrating educational technology into the curriculum. Mr. Cheney has over 18 years experience in leadership, distance education, instructional design and assessment, and media production. He holds a Masters Degree in Education — Instructional Technology from Boise State University and a Bachelors Degree in Telecommunications from the University of Idaho. Mr. Cheney's research interests include building online learning communities and utilizing ePortfolios as a tool to demonstrate program competency.

North Carolina State University

Dr. M. Cleveland-Innes is Associate Professor in the Center for Distance Education at Athabasca University. She's received several awards for her work on the student experience in online environments and hold a major research grant through the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Current research interests are in the area of affective outcomes in online learning, disciplinary differences in online higher education and emotional presence in online communities of inquiry. She teaches Research Methods in the Master of Distance Education Program and is currently designing a doctoral level course in Leadership and Project Management in distance and distributed learning.

Tennessee Advanced Computing Technologies Institute

R.J. Clougherty Jr. is the Director of the Institute for Technological Scholarship, the Tennessee Advanced Computing Technologies Institute, and The Web Design Program at Tennessee Tech U where he is also a Professor of English. His research specialty is Semiotics. He is a Fulbright Scholar whose work has been translated into four languages.

North Carolina State University

Rob Hambrick is an instructional designer with Learning Technology Services at North Carolina State University. Rob provides synchronous learning support and training to faculty, staff and students in higher education and is the SLMS training and support lead at NCSU. He has a Masters degree in Instructional Technology.

School of Commerce and Management at Southern Cross University, Australia

Nicola is a Lecturer within the School of Commerce and Management at the Lismore campus of Southern Cross University, Australia. She has been teaching in the quantitative (mathematics and statistics) area since being appointed to the University in 1993 after several years teaching at Massey University in New Zealand. Nicola has lectured and tutored in Business Mathematics, Discrete Mathematics and Statistics units, both undergraduate and postgraduate, as well as various Pure Mathematics units. Her academic qualifications include a Bachelor of Science (majors in Mathematics and Statistics), a Bachelor of Science with Honours and a Doctor of Philosophy both in Mathematics all from Massey University. While at Massey University Nicola was awarded the G.H. Bennett Prize in Mathematics, she was a Massey Scholar and a UGC Postgraduate Scholar. Before returning to study in 1986, Nicola had a varied employment background, including, quality control work for Taubmans International (N.Z.) Ltd, accounting work for Chubb N.Z. Ltd and Sunbeam Corporation Ltd in New Zealand and 18 months involvement in the management of a vegetarian restaurant and a bookshop in Brighton, England.

In her teaching Nicola attempts to establish a clear link between statistics and its uses in the real world by using real-life problems and data with a strong emphasis on interpretation and communication of results. She was an initial adopter of Elluminate at SCU for her teaching since its inception in 2005.

University of Texas at Dallas

Karen Kennedy has a B.A. in Biological Sciences/Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Medical Technology license. She has 20 years of experience in academic administration at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and five years at The University of Texas at Dallas. Since the Executive Coaching Program at UTD was founded, she has been the administrator for Elluminate Live, which the Program uses to teach their distance learning classes.

School of Commerce and Management at Southern Cross University, Australia

Steve is a lecturer in the School of Commerce and Management at Southern Cross University, Australia and has been based at the Lismore campus since 1986. His teaching areas have included financial accounting, management accounting and primarily auditing. After obtaining his BBus degree in 1979 Steve held several accounting and management positions in Sydney and Adelaide. He has CPA status in the CPA Australia. During 1990 and 1991 he studied full-time and was awarded a Master of Arts (Accounting) from the University of South Australia. His research interests focus on the flexible approaches to delivery and assessment of material, especially influenced by online technologies, having regularly presented at national and international conferences since 2002. He is currently the "champion" and Manager of the Elluminate Live license at SCU.

Institute of Teaching and Learning, Deakin University, Australia

Ian Smissen is Head of Teaching Support and Learning Technologies in the Institute of Teaching and Learning at Deakin University, Australia. Ian has nearly 27 years of professional and academic experience in a wide variety of educational organizations and has spent the last seven years managing the selection, implementation, administration and support of Deakin University's online teaching and learning systems.