About Jenni

Jenni Hayman is a community educator, Ontario college administrator, and learning designer. She often has strong opinions – and they are always her own. Jenni is also a learning scientist and education activist, parceling her time and talents to explore open practices that contribute to increased social justice at a global level. Jenni has established a global consulting practice (2024) called Human Loop Consulting and is seeking new opportunities to partner, create, and support community and PreK-20 learning experiences. Here (link will open in a new window) is more about Human Loop Consulting.

Jenni works for higher education institutions as part of ongoing practice and research (work that helps ensure income) and has been a consultant (since October 2023). Prior to consulting, she was a Chair, School of Business (Online) at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.  Jenni was a Chair and Dean at Cambrian College working with the amazing Teaching and Learning Innovation Hub team from 2019-2023, and a Program Manager with the eCampusOntario team from 2017-2018. In her work for most of the past 20 years, she has partnered with technology experts and educators from 24 colleges and 21 universities in Ontario to explore excellence in online and technology-enabled teaching and learning. Jenni completed (2018) her Doctor of Education (Ed.D) in Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University. There was a lot of learning and research happening with that. Jenni’s current research interests include how artificial intelligence tools might be used for ethical good in the design of learning experiences, the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in post-secondary contexts, and the role of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in curriculum design and learner-led inquiry-based research. Jenni is an extremely proud alumnus of the Global OER Graduate Network, a wonderful community of practice.

From January 2015 to July 2016, Jenni worked as part of an extraordinarily talented team on massive, open, online courses (MOOCs) on the edX platform as part of Arizona State University’s Global Freshman Academy. This was an amazing opportunity to get under the hood of OPENedX and learn in the trenches about open education that it also accredited. There were a lot of excellent wicked, messy problems in that. They continue to haunt her dreams.

Prior to moving to Arizona (December 2014), Jenni was the Executive Director of a another great learning experience, Wide World Ed, now closed for business. From July 2013 to July 2015 she engaged with an amazing, open group of global educators to talk about open courses and OER. She completed her Master of Education (M.Ed) degree in January 2014 with Athabasca University, choosing the thesis stream to strengthen her research skills. If you’re interested, the thesis was called Essential Practices for Online Instruction: A Delphi Study. Jenni learned that it is very important to have a colon in a thesis title. It’s also great to have a Colin in your Master’s cohort. Thanks Colin Madland.

From 2010-2013 with Ryerson University (now named Toronto Metropolitan University), Jenni combined her change management, mentoring, and instructional design skills to collaboratively develop a lot of online courses. These degree-credit course designs included research and exploration of open and digital resources, assessment options suited for the online environment, exploration of copyright and accessibility needs for digital materials, and tools for interactive online teaching and learning. Her work, in partnership with several open-minded instructors on the development of Ryerson’s Food Security Certificate, earned the 2013 Sloan Consortium (now called the Online Learning Consortium) Award for Pedagogical Innovation.

Specialties: Leadership in public education, critical thinking, consultation and support for the curation and effective pedagogic implementation of open education practices and resources.

Jenni is currently a certified Creative Commons Educator, and an Advisory Board member and Hub Coordinator for the Open Education for a Better World (OE4BW) project led by Tanja Urbančič and Mitja Jermol in Slovenia.  She was also the College Online representative for the eCampusOntario Board of Directors from 2021-2024. She was an inaugural Steering Committee member for the Open Policy Network (OPN), and continues to love their work, and the work of all organizations committed to open access.

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