American University Cairo, Egypt

Maha Bali

Maha Bali, PhD is an Associate Professor of Practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo, where she has been a faculty developer since 2003. She holds a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield, UK. She is the co-director of Virtually Connecting and co-facilitator of Equity Unbound (links below), and is an advisory board member of OneHE and the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange project. She tweets @bali_maha and blogs at https://blog.mahabali.me

Autumm Caines

Autumm Caines is an Instructional Designer at the University of Michigan – Dearborn in the Hub for Teaching and Learning Resources, prior to which she held professional appointments at St. Norbert College and Capital University. She holds a MA in Educational Technology from The Ohio State University. In the Open, she is a Co-Director of Virtually Connecting where her work explores questions of presence and spontaneity in synchronous virtual conversations as well as equity and inclusion in online community. She also helps to organize and facilitate Open/Connected online events for the purposes of faculty development and her own practice in digital stewardship, most recently with the tags #DigCiz, #DigPINS, and #EthicalEdTech. Autumm tweets @autumm and maintains a web portfolio at https://autumm.org

Mia Zamora

Mia Zamora, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English, the Director of the MA in Writing Studies and the Director of the Kean University Writing Project in Union, NJ, USA. She has recently received the Kean University “Professor of the Year” Award. Dr. Zamora’s commitment to equity, digital literacies, data rights, and intercultural understanding is clear in both her scholarship and leadership work. She has founded several global learning networks including Equity Unbound (#unboundeq) and Networked Narratives (#netnarr), and was Co-Chair of ALT’s #OER20 conference on “Care in Openness”.

Patrice Prusko

Dr. Prusko has a strong commitment to the thoughtful use of technology as a way to increase access to meaningful educational experiences for all learners and is passionate about using technology to increase global access to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education, and enable all students to have a globally networked learning experience. She has 15+ years progressive and multi-faceted experience with design and management of digital learning projects, specializing in: building networks and creating community engagement strategies; and developing innovative pedagogical approaches using multiple modalities including social media, open educational resources and virtual meeting tools. Dr. Prusko is currently Associate Director, Learning Design and Technology, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and MBA in business management, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (Ph.D.).

Irene Maweu

Irene has been an online facilitator for e/merge Africa Network for five years. Ms. Maweu has experience in content development and online learning. She has tutored, facilitated online, and supported online learning and communication, as well as carrying out face to face facilitation and moderation in training for capacity development, policy and strategic planning workshops and national and international conferences.
She has worked and consulted all over Africa. She is a member of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), eLearning in Development implementation (ELDI), Guidelines International Network (GIN) and an e/merge Africa Network and team member.

Kate Bowles

Kate Bowles is the Associate Dean International in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong, Australia, where she is also the former Head of Educational Design. She has been facilitating online communities across distance in asynchronous and synchronous modes for twenty years. Kate’s focus is on learning from lived experience to co-design culturally safe and mentally safe learning environments that respect student diversity. She is the founder of NiCHE: Narrative informed Codesign in Health and Education, a grassroots group of scholars and researchers working to provide consumer and student insights to service design.

Remi Kalir

Remi Kalir is an Assistant Professor of Learning Design and Technology at the University of Colorado Denver School of Education and Human Development. He researches how social annotation facilitates collaborative, open, and equitable learning. More here: http://remikalir.com/meet-remi/bio/

Susan D. Blum

Susan D Blum is a professor of anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, currently fixated on education and pedagogical praxis. She is the author of “I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College (Cornell, 2016) and the editor of the forthcoming volume Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead) (West Virginia University Press, 2020).

Mays Imad

Mays Imad is a neuroscientist and professor of pathophysiology and biomedical ethics at Pima Community College, the founding coordinator of the Teaching and Learning Center, and a Gardner Institute Fellow. Dr. Imad’s current research focuses on stress, self-awareness, advocacy, and classroom community, and how these relate to cognition, metacognition, and, ultimately, student learning and success. She tweets @lrningsanctuary

Sherri Spelic

Sherri Spelic has taught elementary Physical Education at the American International School Vienna since 1996. She has an MA in Sport Psychology and an MEd in Independent School Leadership. She blogs frequently on a variety of topics and is founder of the online publication, Identity, Education and Power which invites educator commentary on the intersections of those three themes. Her essay collection, Care At The Core, was released in 2019.

Jasmina Najjar

Raised in London, Jasmina Najjar moved to Lebanon and graduated with high distinction from AUB in 2000 (BA in English Literature). She went back to the UK to pursue her MA in Literature, Culture and Modernity at Queen Mary, University of London. Her thesis was on fragmented Lebanese identity in the translated works of Rashid Al Daif (it was published as a book in April 2011).

In Fall 2008-2009, Jasmina Najjar joined AUB as a full-timer. Since then, she has been focusing her energies on teaching English communication skills, ever eager to share her real-life writing skills and techniques with her students. One of the first to teach courses in blended format at AUB, she has an avid interest in technology, social media, and digital pedagogy. Her work on gamification in higher education attracted the attention of the press.

Jasmina Najjar is also the author of Beirut Knights and is a contributor to print and online publications. Passionate about film, she was a jury member for the second Lebanese Cinema Movie Guide Awards, represented Lebanon on the Critics without Borders panel at the fifth Malmö Arab Film Festival, and is the co-founder of Movie Sharks.

Nadine Aboulmagd

Nadine is a Senior Instructional Designer at the Center for Learning and Teaching and an instructor at the Graduate School of Education, at the American University in Cairo. She has an MA in Educational Leadership with a concentration in higher education and online learning. She is the MENA Lead Buddy for Virtually Connecting. As a lifelong learner and educator, she considers herself a critical digital pedagogue and is passionate about online and blended learning, ed tech, open education, learning experience design, productivity science, meditation and coffee.

Sarah-Jane Crowson

Sarah-Jane works as an educator at Hereford College of Arts, which is a small, specialist arts college in the UK. She is a poet. Her poetry can be read in various UK and US journals and in 2020 her haiku was shortlisted for The Haiku Foundation’s ‘Touchstone’. She is also a postgraduate researcher at Birmingham City University looking at ideas of the ‘critical radical rural’ in creative Higher Education.

Michael Weinraub

Michael Weinraub works for Bixal as a Knowledge and Learning Specialist in the Bureau of Resilience and Food Security of USAID. He began a career in education as a Spanish bilingual elementary school teacher in Los Angeles and has worked in a variety of roles related to formal and informal learning, staff development, learning design, and knowledge management. Michael earned an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language at Hunter College and an MBA in Human Resource Management at Pace University. He tweets @mweinraub87 and blogs (too infrequently) at https://michaelweinraub.wordpress.com/

Alex Fink

Alex Fink is a youth worker and community-based participatory researcher / evaluator. He’s worked in and out of schools with young people of all ages, supporting young people in making change in their lives and communities. He’s been part of several research projects and numerous evaluations involving young people and participatory projects. These projects often involve the analysis and understanding of technology as both a tool and an obstacle to respectful, participatory work with young people. Currently he works with the international, participatory youth leadership program called YouthBank and the food justice-oriented youth leadership program Roots for the Home Team.

Sarita Shukla

Sarita Shukla (uses she/her pronouns) is an educational psychologist and serves as a lecturer in the School of Educational Studies, University of Washington-Bothell. Sarita’s research interest are at the intersection of culture, educational technology, and student motivation. She teaches students in the undergraduate program within her school. She teaches courses in the areas of multicultural education, learning, identity, and motivation. Her work emphasizes anti-oppressive pedagogy and she strives to create classroom communities where all identities are welcomed, affirmed, and sustained. She absolutely loves being in education which naturally lends itself to being interdisciplinary. Sarita also loves to read multicultural literature and is currently reading “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi. You can find her online at http://www.saritashukla.com or via twitter @SaritaYShukla