Assoc Prof Will Rifkin led the ‘New Media for Science’ Project funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, which identified university science academics who are pioneering assignments that have students creating videos, podcasts, blogs, and wikis. Rifkin focuses on communication among experts and non-experts in settings ranging from public hearings to steel mills and doctors’ offices to classrooms. He is an engineer-turned-sociologist with degrees from MIT, the University of California-Berkeley, and Stanford University. He has been affiliated with the Xerox PARC spinoff, the Institute for Research on Learning, and helped launch the Program on Social and Organizational Learning at George Mason University, combining organizational behaviour, information technology, and market economics. He has been recognised as one of Australia’s most innovative and effective university instructors, known for being engaging, discomforting, revealing, and humourous. He currently holds appointments at the U of Sydney and the U of Queensland.

Before taking up the Gippsland position, Peter spent many years as Director of Vocational Education and Training at Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia, with responsibility for higher education in regional Western Australia. Whilst at Curtin Peter spent time in the United States, Canada, Malaysia and the African sub-Sahara, exploring and developing business opportunities.

Prior to his Directorship position at Curtin, Peter was Director of University of Central Queensland’s Open Learning Network, which operated 42 learning centres throughout Queensland. The network included centres stretching from Thursday Island, to Mount Isa and Roma. The specialisation of Open Learning Network included audiographic conferencing and on-line learning technologies.

Working at the leading edge of entrepreneurship in vocational education has played a large part in Peter’s career, with Senior Management roles at Gold Coast Institute of TAFE, Bundaberg College of TAFE, Logan Institute of TAFE and the Wide Bay Institute of TAFE.

Peter became the inaugural Australian Flexible Learning Fellow in 1999: a fellowship awarded by the Australian National Training Authority in recognition of his work as a leader in flexible learning. He completed his doctorate in 2004 and his thesis explored the nature of entrepreneurship in education.

Peter’s life before education included roles such as Supervisor responsible for constructing draglines for Utah Development at Moranbah; leading hand fitter/welder for Peko Wallsend’s underground mine at Tennant Creek, and as a boilermaker working on projects such as the construction of new wharves at Brisbane’s Fisherman Island and shipbuilding in Newcastle.