Dr. Elizabeth Childs

Tel: (780) 675-6179
Email: echilds@telus.net

Hi Everyone!

I am always stumped when asked what it is that I do. The broad answer is Educational Consultant. However, to me this never really seems to capture the uniqueness and excitement of the various projects that I have been involved with. In a general sense I would say that I work with people to help them facilitate their own learning and the learning of others in their company, organization or institution.

I am currently located in Victoria, BC. My doctoral degree is from the University of Calgary in their Educational Technology program. Thanks to my ever-patient sweetheart, I have a great little office in our back garden to work away in. My main research areas of interest include preparing people to teach online, models for professional education and the transition from novice to expert both in the traditional learning environment as well as in the context of distance learning. It is a bit busy balancing my research interest and my client’s work but they are both so interesting and enjoyable that I find it is a very rewarding juggle.

I began my adventure in education as a K-12 science teacher in Ontario before deciding to switch gears and focus on adult education and training. I worked in a variety of organizational settings in the capacity of educational consultant and performance improvement specialist before going out on my own as a consultant. At an international manufacturing company I had the opportunity to fill the role of Educational Coordinator. In this capacity I was able to work with the executive team to facilitated leadership development activities, develop succession and education plans for employees and create continuous improvement interventions (team building, conflict resolution etc). At Canadian Pacific Railway, I was involved in analyzing and creating a variety of human performance interventions in support of both technical, safety and support groups. I was also able to try my hand at project management and worked with a great team of people to successfully implement the introduction of new locomotives to the CPR fleet.

As a private consultant, I have had the opportunity to collaborate with various clients in needs analysis, training and non-training interventions and program evaluations studies. I have also had the opportunity to conduct a variety of team building and conflict resolution for academic, government and private industry clients. Some of my more current projects involve working with:

• The Council of Ministers of Education (CMEC) adult learning meta-analysis

• BCEd Online – Director Professional Learning

• Faculty Development Initiatives – University of Sarajevo, Bosnia

• Camosun College – Tactical Plan for Distributed Learning

• Leadership Development for Student Centred Instruction to support Principals and Headmasters – Western Ch

For the past ten years, I have been employed as a Sessional Instructor in the M.Ed. (Distance) Program offered via the University of Calgary, Faculty of Education. In this role I have designed and delivered graduate level courses in Instructional Design and Instructional Development for the face-to-face and online environments. I have also had the enjoyment of being part of the original design team for the Master’s of Distributed Learning program at Royal Roads University as well as teaching in the MADL Residency sessions and most recently, being its Acting Director. I have been teaching at Athabasca University for three years in the areas of Systems and Learning Theories as well as Evaluation.

Planning, designing and building online courses and programs across many different sectors has been a key area of focus of my consulting work. The majority of projects that I am involved in are done at a distance and online/virtual project teams are the dominant way in which I collaborates with others to complete projects. Currently, I am working as the Director of Professional Learning for BCEd Online – a consortium of K-12 school districts in British Columbia Canada where I am responsible for providing access for BC Educators to quality professional learning opportunities that add value to their distributed learning practices. I am also involved in two separate CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) projects in China and Bosnia that focus on providing professional development and learning opportunities for teachers, professors and administrators through a blended or fully online model. So what about the fun stuff? Well, besides my work I’ve been known to do some experimental cooking, snowboarding, mountain biking and since we moved to the coast, surfing!

 

 

CDE - Last Updated by MK December 05, 2011