Workshop Presenters Bio's

Dr Tony Lelliott

Dr Tony Lelliott is a programme specialist at the South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide). He specialises in the area of teacher education. At Saide, he is a co-leader of the OER Africa Professional Development Project and the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) National Senior Certificate for Adults (NSCA) Learning Material Project. He also leads the Early Maths Stories Project within African Storybook (ASb) and is currently working on a review of information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated teacher professional developments at scale. Prior to joining Saide, Dr Lelliott worked with pre-service teachers, as well as honours and master’s degree students and doctoral degree candidates. Over the years, he has been appointed to several leadership positions at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), including as director and dean. Dr Lelliott is the author of 21 publications in refereed journals and books, as well as 47 local and international conference papers. He has also supervised 20 doctoral and master’s degree graduates.

Dr Kris Stutchbury

Dr Kris Stutchbury had been a secondary school teacher for 20 years before joining The Open University as a subject leader for Science in the Secondary Teacher Training programme. She is a former Director of the Open University’s Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme, and is currently TESSA’s Academic Director, Co-Director of the Zambian Education School-based Training (ZEST) programme and a member of the OpenSTEM Labs team, which challenges the traditional science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pedagogical model. She is also part of a team that is developing a new master’s degree in Learning and Teaching at The Open University. She recently completed her PhD in Teacher Education and was the lead author of the successful TESSA massive open online course (MOOC).

Olawale Koledafe

Olawale Koledafe is an educational technologist. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Educational Technology from the University of Ilorin in Nigeria. Mr Koledafe has a strong connection with technology integration in every aspect of education. He has more than six years’ experience in various aspects of educational technology, with a track record of readiness to adopt and adapt new technologies for instructional use. He is highly motivated to use ICT in classroom teaching and learning, proficient at recognising learning needs and can provide solutions that facilitate such needs.  He currently serves as an instructional technologist at the Centre for Open and Distance Learning, and as an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Educational Technology at the University of Ilorin. He has been part of several e-learning projects, and has facilitated several training sessions and workshops in diverse concepts of technology integration in education. 

Maryla Bialobrzeska

Maryla Bialobrzeska has a master’s degree in Curriculum Design. She has been employed at the South African Institute for Distance Education (Saide) since 2003, leading and working on a number of large-scale distance education projects in the schooling and post-schooling subsectors. In 2014 and 2015, she was part of a research team that investigated initial teacher education provision across five South African universities. In 2017 and 2018, she led the programme material development for the distance education offering of the Advanced Diploma: School Leadership and Management, a national programme that will be offered at South African universities. She has worked in a number of sub-Saharan African countries, including Ghana, Lesotho, Namibia and Zambia, as well as with various institutions and international organisations, such as the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).