Cultivating Digital Skills for Global Relevance

Prof. Upasana Singh is the Academic Leader and Associate Professor  in the Discipline of Information Systems and Technology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Westville Campus in Durban, South Africa. She is also an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Victorian Institute of Technology in Australia. Dr. Singh holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of South Africa, along with a Master’s degree and a B.Com. Honours degree in the same field. With over 15 years of experience, she specializes in e-Commerce, IT Consulting, and Programming. Her research focuses on Educational Technologies, and she has published four edited books, 24 journal articles, and many conference papers. She serves as chair of the International Conference on Digital Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (digiTAL2K). She has presented at over 25 international conferences as keynote/guest speaker. Since 2018, Dr. Singh has assisted more than 1,500 academics across South Africa, Mauritius, India, and Malaysia in adopting digital teaching methods. She developed three conceptual models for online learning during the pandemic and has received significant research grants over her research career. Additionally, she has been nominated for various  awards in the domain of the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SOTL

Prof. Sid Nair is currently, Executive Dean and the Dean of Learning, Teaching & student experience at the Victorian Institute of Technology (VIT), Australia. In his role he is responsible for the strategic directions, the learning, teaching, student experience and quality matters of the Institution.Previous to the appointment at VIT Sid was the Executive Director of the Tertiary Education Commission, Mauritius. As Chief Executive Officer of the Commission he was responsible for the formulation and execution of strategies, policies and procedures in the higher education sector in Mauritius. He was instrumental in the development of the National Research agenda for the higher education sector. In this domain he introduced several research schemes to promote and build capacity in research which was in line with the visions of Mauritius.

Prior to joining TEC, he was Professor of Higher Education Development at the Centre for Education Futures (CEF), University of Western Australia. His research work lies in the areas of quality of teaching and learning, classroom and school environments, and the implementation of improvements from stakeholder feedback. His current role is to build capacity of academics in the digital delivery of their teaching.

His career path also had him as Interim Director and Quality Advisor (Evaluations and Research) at the Centre for Higher Education Quality (CHEQ) at Monash University, Australia. In this role as Quality Advisor he headed the evaluation unit at Monash University where he restructured the evaluation framework at the university. The approach to evaluations at Monash has been noted in the first round of the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) audits and is part of the good practice database.

His research work lies in the areas of quality in the Australian higher education system, classroom and school environments, and the implementation of improvements from stakeholder feedback. He has extensive lecturing experience in the applied sciences in Canada, Singapore and Australia. He is an international consultant in quality and evaluations in higher education.