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.