About the authors
Phillip Adams is Evaluations Manager at the Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ), Monash University, Australia. Mr Adams’s expertise in the field of evaluations is in infrastructure solutions for the efficient functioning of feedback systems. He has significant knowledge and expertise in developing technological solutions to a range of equity and accessibility issues. He has published a number of related articles and presented at relevant conferences. Apart from his work in evaluations, he has extensive experience in project management, computer system design and programming, and secondary teaching.
Lorraine Bennett is an Associate Professor at the University of Ballarat. Dr Bennett provides leadership for academic development at the University of Ballarat in regional Australia and is the Project Leader for an Australian Learning and Teaching Council Leadership Project at Monash University, Australia. Dr Bennett has extensive experience in leadership, having held a large number of senior roles in higher education and local and state government. The main focus of her work is on the scholarship of learning and teaching and spans staff development, teaching and research. Her special areas of interest include leadership capacity building, organisational reform, change management, strategic planning, policy development, quality improvement and internationalisation.
Denise Chalmers is Winthrop Professor and Director of the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) at the University of Western Australia (UWA). She has worked in higher education for 25 years and is currently leading a national Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) project on rewarding and recognising quality teaching and learning through developing teaching and learning indicators in Australian universities. She is President of the Council of Australian Directors for Academic Development (CADAD). Prior to this, Denise was a foundation Director at the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (renamed the Australian Learning and Teaching Council), a national organisation established to promote the quality of teaching and learning in Australian higher education, with specific responsibility for Awards, Fellowships and International Links. In her previous position as Director of the Teaching and Educational Development Institute (TEDI) at the University of Queensland, Australia, she was responsible for supporting the enhancement of teaching and learning, professional development, e-learning resource development and evaluation of teaching across the University.
Hamish Coates leads higher education research at the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). Over the last decade, he has designed and led numerous projects that have influenced international, national and institutional research, policy and practice. Dr Coates’ research and publications focus on the definition, measurement and evaluation of educational processes, contexts and outcomes. His active interests include large-scale educational evaluation, tertiary education policy, learner engagement, institutional leadership, quality assurance and assessment methodology. He teaches research methods at all levels, works routinely with national and institutional advisory groups, publishes and presents widely. He has worked with all Australian universities and numerous training organisations, serves on a number of editorial boards, has been a consultant to the World Bank and OECD, and has held visiting fellowships at the University of Michigan and UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning.
Hadina Habil is Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages, Faculty of Management and Human Resource Development, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor. Her research interests are in the areas of English for Specific Purposes, Business Communication, Computer Mediated Communication and Language and Communication. She has presented papers in conferences nationally and internationally and has published a number of articles in related areas.
Lee Harvey is Professor at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. Prior to that, he was Director of Research at the Higher Education Academy in the UK. He also established and was Director of both the Centre for Research into Quality at the University of Central England in Birmingham and the Centre for Research and Evaluation at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Lee has wide experience in social science research as a research methodologist and social philosopher. His areas of expertise include higher education policy, with particular focus on issues of quality, employability and student feedback. He has published widely, with over 35 books and research monographs and over 120 articles in international journals, books and compendiums. He has been a quality adviser to institutions across the world. He is regularly invited to be a keynote speaker at major international conferences.
Katarina Mårtensson is an academic developer at Lund University Centre for Educational Development, Sweden. She runs teacher training courses for academic staff and supports academic staff at all levels in the faculties with an effort to promote and initiate academic development. Currently, she is also responsible for initiatives involving leadership in academia. Together with Torgny Roxa, she has been responsible for a national project in Sweden to support professional development for academic developers. Her main research interests and publications include strategic educational development and social perspectives on learning and cultural change in higher education institutions.
Patricie Mertova is currently a Research Fellow in the Department of Education, University of Oxford, England. Dr Mertova was previously a Research Officer at the University of Queensland, and, prior to that, a Research Fellow in the Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT) and the Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ), Monash University, Australia. She has recently completed her PhD, focusing on the academic voice in higher education quality. She has research expertise in the areas of higher education and higher education quality. Her background is also in the areas of linguistics, translation, cross-cultural communication and foreign languages.
Chenicheri Sid Nair is Professor of Higher Education Development with the Centre for Advancement of Teaching and Learning at the University of Western Australia (UWA). Prior to his appointment to UWA, he was Quality Adviser (Research and Evaluation) at the Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ) at Monash University, Australia. He has extensive expertise in the area of quality development and evaluation, and he also has considerable editorial experience. Currently, he is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Quality Assurance in Engineering and Technology Education (IJQAETE). Prior to this, he was a Managing Editor of the Electronic Journal of Science Education (EJSE). Professor Nair is also an international consultant in a number of countries in the areas of quality and stakeholder feedback.
Fernando F. Padró is Associate Professor in the EdD Programme in Educational Leadership at Cambridge College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He has been actively involved in researching the impact of the field of quality on school and university organisational behaviour and policy for more than 25 years. He has written a number of articles pertinent to issues of quality, quality assurance and accreditation in higher education. He has also presented on these subjects at over 50 conferences and similar forums in Australia, Europe and the USA. He has been a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Examiner in the USA as well as a Peer Reviewer with the Academic Quality Improvement Programme (AQIP) project and is currently responsible for his College’s School of Education Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) accreditation process. Presently, he is the Chair of the American Society for Quality’s (ASQ) Higher Education Advisory Committee and ASQ’s Education Division Vice-Chair for International Activities.
Marlia Puteh is currently a senior lecturer at the College of Science and Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia International Campus, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She has a PhD from Monash University, Australia and also an MA in English Language Studies from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Her areas of interest are quality assurance in higher education, higher education policies, English language studies and online learning.
Torgny Roxå has been an academic developer since 1989. Currently, he is an academic developer in the Faculty of Engineering at Lund University, Sweden. His main interest is in Strategic Educational Development in Higher Education, a cultural approach where the essentialist and the socio-cultural perspectives are used in combination. He has developed several major measures for change, both at Lund University and nationally in Sweden. He holds a Master’s degree in Higher Education from Griffith University, Australia.
James Williams is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Research into Quality, Birmingham City University, UK. Dr Williams’s research focuses on the broad experience of students in higher education, at national and international levels, and he has published widely in the field. Much of this is drawn from his experience in collecting and using institutional student feedback. He regularly presents papers and conducts workshops at international conferences on this subject and has coordinated a number of institutional student satisfaction surveys since 2004. All this is part of his interest in how to use the students’ own experiences to improve quality in higher education. He is Associate Editor of the international journal, Quality in Higher Education. As a historian by training, he continues to publish within his original field of Tudor cultural history and is currently researching the history of HE in the nonuniversity sector.