To make this special edition of the event happen, we have a team of Co-Chairs: Heading up the Domains strand are Lauren (Brumfield) Hanks and Jim Groom and leading on the OER side are Lou Mycroft, Louise Drumm and Joe Wilson.
Jim Groom
Jim Groom, formerly Executive Director of the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies at the University of Mary Washington, has been working towards the idea of Domain of One‘s Own as far back as 2008 and has been dreaming of this opportunity for years. In the Spring of 2011 he opened up a digital storytelling course called “ds106” for anyone to take openly online and hundreds of people participated and continue to give back to that community. In Spring of 2013 he joined a group of hackers and thinkers at MIT to think about how an online framework could allow people to seamlessly syndicate the work they do across the web in a space of their own both on an academic and personal level. In Fall of 2015 he went full time with Reclaim Hosting and has not looked back since. #4life
Lauren Hanks
Lauren graduated from the University of Mary Washington in 2015, and has since pursued a career in web hosting and design. She joined Reclaim Hosting in 2015 as the company’s first hire and has been along for the ride ever since. Now as Director of Operations, Lauren works closely with instructors in higher education across the world to bring flexible web space to the classroom. She is also on the Advisory Board for Digits, a Carnegie Mellon grant funded project that aims to share and preserve digital scholarship by way of software containerization. In her free time, Lauren is a freelance web designer that blogs here and tweets here.
Louise Drumm
Louise’s background is theatre, starting with youth theatre, with its values of collaboration, empowerment and accessible artistic expression. Moving between disciplines and careers – artistic and technological – as a theatre director, software developer, learning technologist, academic developer and lecturer – her work is underscored by the belief that there is more that connect arts and digital education than separate them. In her work in higher education, as a learning technologist, researcher and lecturer, she connects people and ideas, whether it is introducing the political technique of forum theatre to conferences spaces, or inducting educators into playful spaces online where creativity and digital skills go hand in hand. Leading Edinburgh Napier University’s MSc in Blended and Online Education, open education, equity and critical digital pedagogies are at the heart of her educational approach. Her PhD, from Glasgow Caledonian University, was on the role of theory in teaching with technology in higher education. She is currently leading a university project supporting staff and student wellbeing, and online learning and teaching during the pandemic.
Joe Wilson
Joe Wilson is currently Head of Digital Skills at City of Glasgow College.
A UK and international education consultant and the former Chief Executive of the College Development Network. His work focuses on College and work-based education and its structures and practices. He is currently Co-Chair of ALT (Association of Learning Technology) Special Interest Group in Scotland, an SCQF Evaluator, a consultant for the British Council and has served as a domain expert in UNESCO consultations around open educational practice. He has held several public appointments in Scotland over the last 30 years around youth , adult and community education and learning technology, including board memberships of Anniesland, Clyde and Kelvin Colleges.
Previously a schoolteacher, an adult education tutor, a college lecturer, and a senior manager in several Scottish Colleges before working for a range of national agencies and non-departmental public bodies.
He has an ongoing interest in On-Line Assessment and Open Education and is one of the co-developers of the Open Scotland Declaration. As Head of New Ventures at the Scottish Qualifications Authority he secured a public statement of recognition in Scotland for Open Badges as a valid means to recognise achievement in formal and informal learning. Through his practice and consultancy, he remains an active evangelist for open educational practice, digital delivery, and the on-line assessment of knowledge and skills.
A Glaswegian with an incurable social justice complex.
Lou Mycroft
Lou Mycroft is a nomadic educator, writer and public speaker. It took three years’ freelancing for the penny to drop that her entire career had been doing the same thing – building communities as a public health professional, community worker and teacher educator at The Northern College, where she spent nearly two decades. She now builds communities online, largely but not exclusively in further education.Lou is co-founder of the #JoyFE movement and the #AdultConversations campaign for adult and community education. Her rhizomatic practices are changing the shape of professional development in FE. She writes regularly for TES FE and is a former columnist with the Society for Education and Training’s InTuition magazine. She is also part of the editorial team which produces the #JoyFE
digital magazine each month, a critically affirmative look at further, adult and community education practice. She is a TEDx speaker (‘An Ethics of Joy’) and winner of the EduFuturists Staff Wellbeing Champion Award 2020.