Kathryn+Chang+Barker

Name: Kathryn Chang Barker Contact: kbarker@futureed.com/www.FuturEd.com Video: None at this time Bio:  Kathryn Chang Barker is a consulting education futurist with a PhD in education administration and policy studies from the University of Alberta (1994). She has been engaged at all levels of Canada's education and training system. Having started as a teacher and college administrator in Alberta, she has worked across Canada and internationally as a consultant and writer. Barker provides leadership in changing learning systems in the future for the future. As founder and president of FuturED Consulting Futurists Inc., Barker has provided research and development in the education industry since 1995. Clients include Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) in Ottawa as well as various provincial ministries and training institutions. Barker has expertise in the fields of e-learning; workforce development and lifelong learning; education reform in the context of global change; accountability, return on investment, and quality assurance in learning systems; international education and national standards development; adult and workplace literacy; learning technologies and distance education; and prior learning assessment, human capital assets management, and various other fields related to learning innovations. Numerous papers and presentations are in the eLibrary and sectons on the FuturEd Web site. Her current passion is the ePortfolio—the electronic record of a person's acquired skills and knowledge—and she is working to animate an ePortfolio for each and every Canadian—and one ePortfolio for life. Barker has become a consumer's advocate in the field of education and training. She is concerned that the end-users get the information they need to make informed choices, and this is reflected in such FuturEd projects as the and a. In 2002, Barker launched QualitE-Learning Assurance Inc., a service to assess and certify the quality of online learning. Based on the that FuturEd created, QualitE-Learning licenses the eQcheck certification mark to products and services that meet consumer-oriented standards of excellence. Barker is the founding chair of the Learning Innovations Forum d'Innovation Apprentissage, and also serves on the boards of the Canadian Education Association, e-Total Quality Management College (e-TQM College) in the United Arab Emirates, and the European Institute for e-Learning.