Professor Gráinne Conole

National Teaching Fellow 2012 Prior to her role at the University of Leicester Gráinne Conole was Professor of e-Learning in the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University. Her research interests include the use, integration and evaluation technologies and e-learning and the impact of technologies on organisational change. Two of her current areas of interest are how learning design can help in creating more engaging learning activities and Open Educational Resources research. She is an active user of social media such as Twitter (gconole) and Facebook and updates on her current research and reflections on e-learning research can be found on her blog. Gráinne has extensive research, development and project management experience across the educational and technical domains. Funding sources for her work have included the EU, HEFCE, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), JISC and commercial sponsors. 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 nearly 1,000 conference proceedings, workshops and articles, including the use and evaluation of learning technologies. She was co-editor of the RoutledgeFalmer book Contemporary perspectives on e-learning research and has a forthcoming book entitled 'Designing for learning in an open world'. She passionately believes in applying research findings into practice and has been an innovator in the use of technologies to enhance the learner experience since the 90s. This has included the creation of interactive resources, creative use of virtual learning environments and the use of social and participatory media to foster different pedagogical approaches. Gráinne has also worked extensively with practitioners to help them make more informed design judgments about how to create pedagogical effective learning interventions that make innovative use of new technologies. The has included the application of a new learning design methodology, which consists of conceptual design views and a social networking site for the sharing and discussion of learning and teaching ideas. Gráinne also has a personal blog where she posts on her loves for sailing, reading, traveling and cooking.