I am a Professor in Learning Design and Innovation, and Director, Learning Design and Innovation at CQUniversity. I lead an amazing team of educational designers, academics, administrators, and multimedia experts who work with CQUniversity's academic staff across our multi-campus VET and higher education network to support our students.
I have been nationally recognised for my approaches to teaching via distance education including receipt of an Australian Award for University Teaching (AAUT) National Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning (2015) and Award for Australian Teaching Excellence (Humanities) (2019).
I have more than 20 years' experience in communication and education, including continuous service as a part-time Army soldier/officer since 1997. I currently hold the rank of Lieutenant Colonel as a senior military public affairs officer in the Australian Army (Reserve).
I am a passionate advocate for distance education and am an active mentor of staff new to online learning. I have an academic background as a cultural sociologist, with interest in community connection, public interaction and storytelling, and accordingly am an experienced and active qualitative researcher in a wide range of methods, including nominal and focus groups, interviews, surveys, forms of discourse analysis, and also linguistic analysis supporting ethnomethodological approaches.
I am the author of Time Management for Academic Impact (2019) which provides strategies for managing the complexities of teaching in online and on-campus settings, and co-author of Managing your Academic Research Project (2020) and the memoir Will to Live (2014).
I try to juggle academic work, military life, team leadership, innovative ideas, and a family with a sense of humour and perspective. We spend too much time at work to not have fun.
Service
University - Course
University - Unit
Military - Course
Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA)
· Editorial Board, Discourse Context and Media (Q1) [Since Jan 2018]
I am currently accredited for supervision in the following:
Curriculum and Pedagogy - Creative Arts, Media and Communication Curriculum and Pedagogy
Curriculum and Pedagogy - Curriculum and Pedagogy Theory and Development
Communication and Media Studies - Media Studies
Cultural Studies - Consumption and Everyday Life