Prof. Som Naidu

Executive Editor of Distance Education

Prof. Som Naidu is former Pro Vice-Chancellor (Flexible Learning), and Director of the Centre for Flexible Learning at the University of the South Pacific, and currently Principal Associate of Technology, Education and Design Associates — a Melbourne based educational technology consultancy service.

Prof. Naidu has spent most of his professional life in the higher education sector in a variety of roles to do with enhancing learning and teaching in open, flexible, distance, online, and technology-enhanced environments, as well as education more generally in a variety of jurisdictions. He possesses undergraduate qualifications in Education from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, and graduate qualifications in Educational Technology from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

As a former president of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Prof. Naidu has served as Executive Editor of the journal Distance Education (since 1997). In May 2014 the Open University of Sri Lanka awarded Prof. Naidu a D.Litt. (Honoris Causa), in recognition of his extensive contribution to the field of open, flexible, distance and e-learning both regionally and internationally. And in July 2020, Advance Higher Education, UK, admitted Prof. Naidu as a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy for his commitment, contribution, and strategic leadership in the scholarship of learning and teaching globally.

• ORCiD: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7480-8120
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/som-naidu-phd-d-litt-pfhea-346a7199/
• Email: [email protected]
• Twitter: @sommnaidu
• Profile: Legends of online learning: https://www.acode.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=4039

Useful lines of inquiry: How research on digital learning can inform pedagogical practice!

In a response to Michael Glassman on Dewey and Vygotsky and their views on the role of society, experience and inquiry in educational practice (Glassman, 2001), Margaret Gredler and Carol Shields point to our collective failure to read what has gone on before and to read it correctly (Gredler & Shields, 2004). Their poignant commentary served as inspiration for an editorial of the journal “Distance Education” I wrote―with equal despair―about lessons we are not learning or choosing to ignore in relation to research on our pedagogical practices (Naidu, 2015). A reminder of these remarks, and their implications for pedagogical practice seems appropriate at this time given recent developments in artificial intelligence, and the adoption and rebadging of already familiar pedagogical practices such as flipped learning, and emergency remote teaching as novel phenomena. None of these developments lack precedence, however. Indeed, the educational technology literature is littered with these kinds of reactions, exhortations, and controversies. They reflect our failure to critically examine the conversations that are already going on around research questions before starting our own investigations. When starting a new conversation, researchers ought to specify foremost, why is there a need to do so, and who is likely to be interested in joining that new conversation. And when joining a conversation, the focus needs to be on what their unique contribution is to what is already known. Do they have something new and unique to say on the subject, and if so, then how is it considered new, unique and worthy of attention? This keynote will explore how researchers can meet this most basic of tests, to be able to focus their investigations on what is new about their research questions; what do they add to the conversation that is already going on; and most importantly, how do they improve pedagogical practices?

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