Verena’s Bio

Dr. Verena Roberts is a passionate online and blended K-12 educator and an instructional designer who recently completed her EdD in Learning Sciences with a focus on K-12 Open Educational Practices with the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary. She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the University of Calgary and teaches sessional courses at both the University of Calgary and the University of Victoria. She is a 2018-2019 OER Research fellow and 2018 Global Open Graduate Network (#GO-GN) fellow. Her fellowship research focused on podcasting to promote open educational practices.   Verena has taught and designed online/blended courses and consulted about curriculum and technology integration from pre-K to Higher Education in Canada and the United States. She has consulted, facilitated and developed a wide range of open networked learning projects with a focus on OER and designing for learning in any environment. Some of her open projects include cMOOCS like #Digifoot12, #ETMOOC, #OCLMOOC, the ABOER K-12 Multiplying K-12 OER project as well as the #Gamified project. Verena has presented at a wide variety of national and international conferences and she is the 2013 iNACOL Innovative Online and Blended Learning Practice Award Recipient,  the 2019 CNIE K-12 Excellence and Innovation in the Integration of Technology and a 2020 CATE (Canadian Association for Teacher Education) Graduate Student Award Recipient.

At TRU, Verena is the lead instructional designer for the ZTC – Zero Textbook Cost for the Associate of Science Degree. She is also supporting the WeBWorK open homework system project as well as the Open Research Community of Practice with TRU.