I am an academic mom whose life has been transformed by open & connected online learning. I have been passionate about education since I was 10 years old, and I have been a faculty developer since 2003, at the American University in Cairo (AUC) in Egypt. I am now an Associate Professor of Practice at AUC’s Center for Learning and Teaching. I sometimes teach ed tech for teachers at AUC’s Graduate School of Education, and recently started teaching an “educational game design” module in a freshman undergraduate course on creativity. I research higher education, critical thinking, critical pedagogy, MOOCs and intercultural learning, among other things. I also confess to being a MOOCaholic, Writeaholic, and Tweetaholic (@bali_maha). I blog at http://blog.mahabali.me

I am co-facilitator of #EdConteXts (Educators Across Contexts www.edcontexts.org – you should consider contributing!), an informal network and community of teachers, scholars, students, researchers, and others interested in promoting conversations about education in and across contexts around the world. I am also editorial board member of the Journal of Pedagogic Development (www.beds.ac.uk/jpd – you’ll enjoy reading it!), and steering committee member of the Emerging Technologies for Online Learning (#et4online) 2015 conference of the Online Learning Consortium (you should consider going!)