Rate My Professor Sarah Stein

Dr Sarah Stein serves as the Director of Distance Learning at the University of Otago, a role she assumed in early 2014 following her tenure as a senior lecturer in the Higher Education Development Centre (HEDC). In her previous position at HEDC, she taught and coordinated distance-taught papers in the Postgraduate Certificate and Diploma in Tertiary Teaching, ran workshops on distance education for university staff, and co-developed the DISTAID programme in 2008. Prior to joining Otago, she worked in academic staff development at the University of New England in Australia, where approximately 75 percent of papers were offered by distance, and held roles including primary school teacher and curriculum adviser in primary and secondary schools in Australia. She completed a qualification by distance in the early 1990s, sparking her long-term interest in the field. Stein has been involved in Otago's distance learning governance since around 2006, serving on the Distance Learning Reference Group and later as the HEDC representative on the Distance Learning Advisory Board until 2014. Under her leadership, the programme supports nearly 1,900 distance students, equivalent to about 350 full-time equivalents, primarily in postgraduate areas such as Aviation Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Travel Medicine, Clothing and Textile Sciences, Theology, and Social Work.

Stein's research focuses on higher education pedagogy, including e-learning conceptions, professional development for e-learning, student evaluations of teaching, access to textbooks, graduate attributes, and PhD students' use of information and communication technologies. Key publications include 'Conceptions of e-learning and professional development for e-learning held by tertiary educators in New Zealand' (2011), 'Student Views on the Cost of and Access to Textbooks: An Investigation at University of Otago (New Zealand)' (2017), 'The competencies required for effective performance in a university e-learning environment' (2013), and 'Preventing halo bias in grading the work of university students' (2014). She received the 2018 Otago University Students' Association Supervisor of the Year Award for her 15 years of supervising distance PhD students, emphasizing equivalent quality to on-campus experiences. Stein co-edited 'Our World in Your Place: 30 Years of Distance Learning and Teaching at the University of Otago' (2016), serves as president of the Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand, and is a member of the Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub Advisory Group.