Keynote speakers

Ruth Wallace, Director, Social Partnership in Learning Research Consortium (SPIL)
Charles Darwin University

Ruth Wallace is the Director of The Northern Institute at Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT.

The Northern Institute undertakes interdisciplinary research in the areas of social and public policy research and is critical to Northern Australia and its near neighbours.

Ruth’s particular interests are related to engaging in research that improves outcomes for workforce stakeholders in regional and remote Australia. Ruth’s research focus is in vocational education and training practice and workforce development in regional and remote contexts.

Ruth has undertaken research into flexible learning, engaged learning and developing effective pedagogy, materials and assessment for marginalized students.

In particular, this work explores approaches that focus on recognising marginalised learners’ strengths and developing systems that connect to and value learners’ diverse knowledge systems.

Professor Beverley Oliver, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Learning Futures
Deakin University

Beverley Oliver is ALTC National Teaching Fellow 2011 and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Learning Futures) at Deakin University, Australia. Through her National Teaching Fellowship (Assuring Graduate Capabilities), she is engaging curriculum leaders of undergraduate courses from any discipline to work with their colleagues, industry partners, students and graduates to: define course-wide levels of achievement in key capabilities, articulated through standards rubrics; embed the rubrics into student portfolios and course review portfolios and share the challenges and opportunities of such approaches through scholarly publications.

Previous nationally-funded projects include: the ALTC Good Practice Guide: Assuring Graduate Outcomes, the ALTC Teaching Fellowship Benchmarking partnerships for graduate employability and an ALTC Competitive Grant Building Course Team Capacity for Graduate Employability. Beverley's leadership of other projects include: Curtin University’s Curriculum 2010 project (curriculum reform focused on graduate employability, curriculum mapping, ePortfolios and evaluation of curriculum effectiveness) and eVALUate (Curtin University’s online student feedback system).  

Her leadership has been recognised with two ALTC Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2008 and 2010). She publishes in a range of teaching and learning areas, including assuring graduate attributes and capabilities, employability; student, graduate and employer evaluation; curriculum renewal, mapping and analytics; ePortfolios and student ownership and use of emerging devices and Web 2.0 applications. Beverley is the Editor of the Journal of Learning and Teaching for Graduate Employability.

email: b.oliver@deakin.edu.au
mobile: (+61) 0417 640 445 (omit the zero if calling from outside Australia)
Skype: bloliver   Facebook/Twitter: altcfellow
LinkedIn: http://au.linkedin.com/in/beverleyoliver

Simon Garlick, Chief Executive
Western Bulldogs

Simon played 181 AFL games and kicked 141 goals for the Western Bulldogs and Sydney in a career spanning 11 years from 1994 - 2004.

At the conclusion of his playing career, Simon secured a leadership and marketing role with LeasePlan Australia where he worked for six years in the roles of National Manager, SME Solutions, and then subsequently National Manager, Sales and Customer Relations.

In April 2007 Simon was appointed to the Board of the Western Bulldogs Football Club. In November 2009 he was appointed to the position of Chief Commercial Officer within the Club and in December 2010 was promoted to Chief Executive.

Simon is currently a member of the SportWest Executive and Melbourne’s West Brand Steering Group.

During his playing days with the Bulldogs, Simon completed an MBA at Victoria University and was on the Executive of the AFLPA from 2003 to 2005 gaining a well-rounded insight into the core business of Australian Rules Football whilst also furthering his practical experience.

A father of three, Simon is a passionate advocate for the Western Bulldogs and Melbourne’s transforming West – the fastest growing region in Australia and has been instrumental in developing a comprehensive strategic partnership between Victoria University and the Western Bulldogs .