Introducing our hosts
Dr Mark Nichols
Dr Mark Nichols is Executive Director of Learning Design & Development at Open Polytechnic, Aotearoa New Zealand's largest provider of online and distance education. Mark is President of ICDE and has served on the executives of Ascilite, EDEN and FLANZ. He is host of the podcast Leaders & Legends of Online Learning, a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA), and an EDEN Fellow.
Mark's publications include the 2020 book Transforming universities with digital distance education (Routledge) and multiple journal articles, including publications on the themes of indigenisation of learning design and the terminology of education models. He is committed to the international goal of making higher education more inclusive, scalable, and sustainable. You can learn more about Mark from Mark Nichols | LinkedIn.
Professor Giselle Byrnes
Professor Giselle Byrnes is Provost at Massey University Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa, where she is responsible for providing strategic leadership to supporting learning and teaching, academic innovation, and quality assurance, in addition to advancing research and research commercialization across the University. A former Fulbright Scholar, Giselle is an internationally recognized historian and her major research contributions have centered on the dynamics and politics of settler-indigenous histories, public histories, and the politics of national history-writing.
An experienced leader in the higher education sector, Giselle has senior management experience serving universities in both New Zealand and Australia. She has a strong commitment to driving initiatives that enhance equity and access in higher education and sees teaching excellence and innovation as key mechanisms in improving student outcomes and addressing social inequities. Giselle is an advocate for the role played by universities in creating social, cultural, and intellectual benefits to the diverse communities that public universities serve.
Open Polytechnic Kuratini Tuwhera
Open Polytechnic - Kuratini Tuwhera currently operates as a business division of Te Pūkenga and is Aotearoa New Zealand’s specialist national provider of Open, Distance and Flexible Learning (ODFL).
It serves a distinctive constituency of lifelong learners while also underwriting nationwide equity of access to vocational learning.
Enrolling nearly 40,000 mainly part-time adult learners nationally each year, the organisation is the country’s largest provider of vocational education.
With most of its learners combining work and study, Open Polytechnic is also one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s major providers of workforce upskilling and reskilling, with learners employed in organisations, firms and small businesses throughout every part of the country.
Open Polytechnic is committed to the Principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi and honours this with a te ao Māori focus within its courseware development and learning support practices.
The organisation continues to pursue an ongoing digital transformation programme to support innovation in the design, development and delivery of ODFL including advanced learner analytics.
It has one of Australasia’s largest learning design & development operations and banks of digital courseware and offers a range of related services to network and commercial partners.
Programmes range from foundation to certificate, diploma and degree level and are delivered fully online. They are progressively offered through monthly enrolment as the organisation seeks to further increase flexibility for the learners it serves.
Massey University Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa
Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University has grown from a small agricultural college in Palmerston North to become Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest residential university, spread across three campuses in Auckland, Manawatū and Wellington, with a large global community of distance learners.
Massey has a long, proud tradition of breaking new ground in its areas of expertise – business, creative art, health, science and humanities and social science. With its blend of attributes, expertise and characteristics such as flexible life-long learning and high-quality research-intensive education, grounded in our commitments to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Massey represents the model of a university for the 21st century.
Many Massey students choose to study both on-campus and online – what is referred to as blended learning. In 2023, Massey had more than 26,600 students and of these, almost two thirds or 17,400 studied partly or fully by distance/online. Twenty-six per cent of all students who studied on-campus also chose to study one or more courses by distance/online.
The university’s extensive history means Massey’s name goes hand in hand with distance learning. In 1960 there were 510 extramural students and by 1961 there were 700. Today, there are more than 17,000 extramural students at Massey.
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