Week 4: Authors

Associate Professor Kym Fraser, Swinburne University of Technology & Marie (Bernie) Fisher, Australian Catholic University 

Dr Kym Fraser is Associate Professor of Higher Education at Swinburne University of Technology and RMIT University. She has worked in the tertiary education sector in Australia, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and the United States of America. Kym is the editor of the books 'The Future of Learning and Teaching in Next Generation Learning Spaces' and 'Education Development and Leadership in Higher Education', is a past editor of the HERDSA Green and Gold Guide Series, and author of 'Studying for Continuing Professional Development in Health’ and 'Student Centred Teaching'. Kym is currently leading the Australian Government Department of Education and Training funded National Teaching Fellowship 'A national, open access Learning and Teaching Induction Program for staff new to teaching' which is a collaboration between nine Australian universities. Her research interests include the impact of teaching induction programs on teaching conceptions and practice, and building learning and teaching research cultures.

Marie (Bernie) Fisher worked in industry for many years before retraining as a teacher and returning to academia where she has worked for a number of years. She is an academic, writer, teacher and Byzantine historian holding diverse undergraduate and postgraduate academic qualifications in the following: BA/BSc (ANU), GDipEd (UC), GDipHum (UNE), GCHE (ACU), MA (UNE). Currently she is employed in a senior leadership academic development role by the Australian Catholic University in the Learning and Teaching Centre, Academic Development, Canberra campus.

Prior to working in the Learning and Teaching Centre, she was a full time Faculty of Education and Arts lecturer in Information, Communications and Technology (ICT), Education and Commerce. In addition, she occupied leadership roles, such as a Course Coordinator for Master of Teaching Primary, and for a time was Course Coordinator in the Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education. In her previous work life she worked on financial systems design, development and implementation in industry, and was employed in a variety of psychology, computer science, curriculum and administrative leadership roles for both federal and state governments.

Her areas of expertise include: academic teacher induction, ePortfolios, computer systems development, education, ancient history and academic development. Although her teaching, research, training, as well as participation in fitness pursuits keeps her busy, she enjoys the opportunity to encourage teachers to embrace ePortfolios as a dynamic rather than a static repository, profiling evidence of excellence in Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SoLT). In recent years she has produced SoLT international journal publications in Academic Teacher Induction and ePortfolios.