Rate My Professor Ray OBrien

Dr. Ray O'Brien serves as Tumuaki o Toitū te Taiao and Head of Sustainability at the University of Otago, a position he assumed at the start of 2020. Originally from the UK, he relocated to New Zealand in 2005 after working in the military, where he developed leadership programs through adventure activities. Since arriving in New Zealand, O'Brien has held roles across tourism, primary, secondary, and tertiary education sectors. Most recently before his current appointment, he worked at Otago Polytechnic in various learning design capacities, emphasizing the integration of sustainability into learning and teaching practices. He earned a Master of Education (Elearning) from Massey University in 2016 and completed a Doctor of Professional Practice from Otago Polytechnic in 2022. His doctoral thesis, titled "Leadership by Learning Design: Designing learning for a thriving future," supervised by Samuel Mann and Richard Mitchell, proposes a framework integrating anthro-complexity, future studies, decolonisation, transformational learning, and systems transformation to enable learning designers to lead toward a thriving future.

O'Brien's research is practice-based, focusing on education's potential for transformational impact, particularly through complexity theory, futures studies, and decolonised design in learning contexts. He explores how these fields can empower learning designers as leaders. Key publications include "Designing for heutagogy: An independent learning pathway approach" (2017, with S. Mann, G. Ker, P. Eden-Mann; 32 citations), "Highly Structured ePortfolio Platform for Bachelor of Nursing Students: Lessons Learned in Implementation" (2018, with E. Collins; 18 citations), "The centralisation of elearning resource development within the New Zealand vocational tertiary education sector" (2019, with M. Hartnett, P. Rawlins; 14 citations), "Speculative futuring: Learners as experts on their own futures" (2021, with A. Forbes; 11 citations), and more recent works such as "Food waste initiatives in the tertiary sector in Aotearoa New Zealand: The challenge of meeting SDG 12.3" (2023, with B. Mills, M. Mirosa, S. Skeaff) and "Leadership by Learning Design: embrace complexity where it exists" (2025, with S. Mann, R. Mitchell). In his leadership role, O'Brien directs a team handling greenhouse gas emissions, student engagement, and communications, bridging operational and academic efforts to embed sustainable practices across the University under its Sustainability Strategic Framework. He contributes to networks like He Kaupapa Hononga, Otago's climate change research group.