Executive Director at Open Polytechnic of New Zealand

Mark Nichols is the current Executive Director of Learning Design and Development at the Open Polytechnic in Wellington, New Zealand. As of 2024, he is also the president of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE). Nichols completed his Ph.D. at the University of Otago, focusing on spiritual formation experiences between on‐campus and distance Evangelical theological education students.

Some of his most cited and most recent work include:

• Nichols, M. (2003). A theory for eLearning. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 6(2), 1-10.

• Nichols, M. (2008). Institutional perspectives: The challenges of e‐learning diffusion. British journal of educational technology, 39(4), 598-609.

• Nichols, M.(2024). What’s in a name? Wrestling with ‘ODDE’. Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital Education, 1(1), 1-16. 

• Nichols, M. (2024). We need to talk about how we talk about what we talk about: Revisiting ODL. Asian Journal of Distance Education, 19(1). 

Videos:

• Meet Mark Nichols - Keynote speaker at EDEN 2021 Virtual Annual Conference

• ICDE Presidents' Forum 2020: Mark Nichols, ICDE Executive Committee Member

Websites:

• LinkedIn

• Google Scholar