Conference Speakers

Gareth Thomas is Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Coventry University, where his management responsibilities include the development of teaching and learning at undergraduate and postgraduate level, quality and standards, and staff development. He has a long-standing interest in releasing the creative potential of individuals to bring about change and has applied some of his ideas over a 5-year period in Coventry University, taking it to the forefront of on-line learning experimentation. He is the editor of Francothèque: A Resource for French Studies, the Open University's first incursion into distance-learning material for students of a foreign language, and joint author of the Multilingual Business Handbook. His main contribution to academic research lies in the field of Spanish politics and literature.

Gráinne Conole is Professor of Educational Innovation in Post-Compulsory Education at the University of Southampton, with research interests in the use, integration and evaluation of Information and Communication Technologies and e-learning and impact on organisational change. She was previously the Director of the Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol, a centre of excellence on the development and use of information and communication technology in education. 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). Before moving to Bristol in 1999, she held a senior position at the University of North London as head of technology-based learning, with institution-wide responsibility for recommending strategy and policy developments in the academic use of ICT. The post included the establishment and direction of a newly created Teaching and Learning Technology Centre, including ICT research and development activities.