Plenary Speakers

The Ubiquitous Learning: An International Conference will feature plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field, as well as numerous parallel presentations by researchers and practitioners.

Caroline Haythornthwaite
Gary Poole
Tabitha McKenzie
Catherine Wangeci Thuo

Garden Conversations

Plenary Speakers will make formal 30-minute presentations. They will also participate in 60-minute Garden Conversations – unstructured sessions that allow delegates a chance to meet the speakers and talk with them informally about the issues arising from their presentation.

Please return to this page for regular updates.

The Speakers

Caroline Haythornthwaite
Caroline Haythornthwaite (PhD, Toronto, 1996) is newly appointed Director, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia. She joins UBC in August, 2010 after 14 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. In 2009-10, she was Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London presenting and writing on ‘Learning Networks’, and in summer 2009 she was a visiting researcher at the Brazilian Institute for Information in Science and Technology (IBICT), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has an international reputation in research on information and knowledge sharing through social networks, and the impact of computer media and the Internet on work, learning and social interaction. Her studies have examined social networks of work and media use, the development and nature of community online, distributed knowledge processes, the nature and constraints of interdisciplinary collaboration, and the transformative effects of the Internet and web 2.0 technologies on learning and collaborative practices. Recent work has concentrated on addressing e-learning as a socio-technical implementation for education, and also as a general, emerging practice of online, informal learning. Major publications include ‘The Internet in Everyday Life’ (2002, with Barry Wellman); ‘Learning, Culture and Community in Online Education’ (2004, with Michelle M. Kazmer), ‘The Handbook of E-learning Research’ (2007, with Richard Andrews), and ‘E-learning Research and Practice’ (2011, with Richard Andrews).
Gary Poole
From 2000 to 2010, Gary Poole directed the Centre for Teaching and Academic Growth and the Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at UBC. From 2000 to 2004, he was the president of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and is currently the president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Gary has won an excellence in teaching award from SFU and a 3M Teaching Fellowship. In his years at UBC, he has received two teaching awards, plus a Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for contributions to Higher Education and a Lifetime Achievement Award from STLHE.

He is the co-author of “Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education,” and “The Psychology of Health and Health Care: A Canadian Perspective.” Gary is also an associate professor in the School of Population and Public Health in UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and Senior Scholar in the Centre for Health Education Scholarship.

Tabitha McKenzie
Tabitha McKenzie is a lecturer in Māori education at Victoria University of Wellington Faculty of Education in New Zealand and a Programme Co-ordinator of a Ministry of Education (New Zealand) funded Teacher Professional Development (TPD) programme called Whakapiki i te Reo. The TPD programme uses blended (mobile technology and face-to-face) as well as a whole school, in-school approach to increase teacher’s proficiency of the Māori language (the indigenous language of New Zealand). Tabitha is also enrolled in her PhD at Victoria University of Wellington. The aim of her study is to explore the challenges and opportunities of using the iPod to attain proficiency in te reo Māori.
Catherine Wangeci Thuo
Catherine Wangeci Thuo (Kariuki), a Kenyan National, is the Project Manager of the AfDB/UNDP Multinational Support Project at the African Virtual University. She is an education specialist who has worked with the AVU at various capacities since January 2004. Catherine has extensive experience in education and training having worked as a Training Manager with a training organization, MSC Africa, in Rwanda. Amongst other contributions to academic citizenship, Catherine has co-authored a chapter; Quality Assurance in the African Virtual University: A Case Study, in a Commonwealth of Learning book, Towards a Culture of Quality (2007) and has written a thesis, Investigating the Use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Primary Teacher Training Colleges in Kenya (2006). She is currently a Doctoral student of Education, Curriculum Studies (ICT in Education) at the University of South Africa. Catherine has a passion for the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education and is convinced that the use of these technologies in education will leapfrog Africa into a position of fair competition in the global economy.