As part of the ocTEL course we are running weekly webinars, starting on 30th April. Webinars are open to all and are free to attend. ocTEL participants will automatically receive joining instructions, so there is no need to register again. We will make the recordings of the sessions available via the ocTEL website. If you haven't yet registered for the course then you can still do so via the ocTEL registration form.

This week's webinar

You can access this week's session via this link (please note the session will not be live until one hour before the start time).

In formal higher education the desired shift in a new student-directed pedagogical paradigm is very often circumscribed by inappropriate learning design as well as by pre-established and pre-conceived power relationships between the teacher and the students, in the centre of which are often oppressive assessment techniques. In this seminar Dr Vlachopoulos will focus on how a more student-directed learning design can support and empower the creation of togetherness and belonging in a community of distance learners in formal higher education. He will present the findings of recently completed research that looked at the interactions in two different learning tasks as part of a postgraduate online distance learning programme.

About the presenter

Dr Panos Vlachopoulos studied Philosophy and Pedagogy at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece, followed by an M,Ed in E-learning from the University of Manchester and a PhD in Education (Online Pedagogy) from the University of Aberdeen. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Higher Education Development. He has international experience of online learning design  and research  in technology-enhanced learning from diverse educational contexts such as HEI in the UK, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Greece. He was the Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice in Higher Education at Aston University in the UK, where he also chaired Aston's Distance Learning Working Group and the Educational Research Ethics Committee. From 2009 to 2010 he was a full time lecturer in e-Learning at Massey University in New Zealand, a position in which he was appointed to in order to co-lead the development of Massey’s MEd in E-learning. Previously he held positions at Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Aberdeen as an Academic Development Adviser in Online Learning Design. He is currently leading three Macquarie Teaching Development Projects on Compressed Curriculum and Online Learning Design,  on Open Educational Resources for indigenous studies  and  on Professional Development of Academic Staff Capabilities for Learning Design using Moodle.