Moodlemoot 2011

MOOTUK11 – Keynote speakers

Gráinne Conole is Professor of e-Learning at the Open University, with research interests in the use, integration and evaluation of Information and Communication Technologies and e-learning and impact on organisational change.

Grainne Conole

She was previously chair of educational innovation at Southampton University and before that Director of the Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol.

She has extensive research, development and project management experience across the educational and technical domains; funding sources have included HEFCE, ESRC, EU and commercial sponsors). Recently funded projects include the HEFCE-funded E-Learning Research Centre, the JISC/NSF funded DialogPlus digital libraries project and the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods.

She serves on and chairs a number of national and international advisory boards, steering groups, committees and international conference programmes. She has published and presented over 200 conference proceedings, workshops and articles, including over 50 journal publications on a range of topics, such as the use and evaluation of learning technologies. She is editor of the Association of Learning Technologies journal, ALT-J.


Frank McLoughlin, CBE, Principal, City and Islington College

Frank McLoughlin, CBE

Frank McLoughlin has been Principal of City and Islington College since July 2002.

Located in five purpose-designed centres, City and Islington College is one of the largest general further education colleges in England: it has over 15,000 students, the equivalent of 711 full-time staff and an annual budget in excess of £50 million. The College has recently completed a £60 million building and refurbishment programme.

In the May 2008 Ofsted Inspection the College joined a small handful of colleges nationally, judged to be outstanding in every measure. In February 2008 the College was awarded the prestigious Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education – the only College to be awarded this for a second time.  In December 2005 the College was awarded Beacon Status.

Frank is a trustee of the Helena Kennedy Foundation, a board member of Action Aid UK, a member of the All Souls Group and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Frank was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list 2009.

Martin Dougiamas

Martin Dougiamas is best known as the founder of Moodle, the popular free course management system used by millions of teachers around the world.

As the executive director of Moodle Pty Ltd in Perth, Western Australia, he leads the team of software developers at the heart of the Moodle project and the global network of 54 Moodle Partner service companies that help provide funding for this independent open source software project.

Martin has a mixed academic background with post-graduate degrees in Computer Science and Education, and continues to focus on researching how educators approach internet-based education. His major goal for the future is to improve the quality of education by encouraging social constructionist and collaborative practices within online learning communities.

We are excited to welcome him back to this year’s Moot and are looking forward to see if we will manage another Skype link with the MootNZ.

Tim Anstiss

Tim Anstiss, AppliedWellbeing

Tim qualified in Medicine from Southampton and Sports Medicine from the University of Virginia. His career focus as a physician has been behaviour change, performance, health and wellbeing improvement. Tim is a popular and amusing speaker and trainer and advises a number of organisations on how to use proven behaviour science to improve levels of health, wellbeing, efficiency and effectiveness. He has pole vaulted for Great Britain, appeared on Gladiators as a contender and was one of the Slough 50 in the BBC documentary ‘Making Slough Happy’

Despite significant growth in material wellbeing over the last 50 years average levels of happiness and satisfaction with life have stayed relatively flat whilst levels of obesity, depression and alcohol abuse are on the rise. In this rapid fire presentation Dr Tim Anstiss will provide us with an overview of the emerging science of personal wellbeing and his top 10 tips for protecting and improving our levels of happiness, wellbeing and resilience into the future.