ACEL 2018 Conference theme is 'Trust your experience – setting the learning agenda'

First keynote speakers announced

David Kolb
Chairman of Experience Based Learning Systems (EBLS), an organization that he founded in 1981 to advance research and practice on experiential learning. EBLS has developed many experiential exercises and self-assessment instruments including the latest Kolb Learning Style Inventory 4.0 and the Kolb Educator Role Profile, an inventory designed to help educators apply experiential learning principles in their work.

He is best known for his research on experiential learning and learning styles described in the new Second Edition of Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Other books include—The Experiential Educator: Principles and Practices of Experiential Learning, How You Learn Is How You Live: Using Nine Ways of Learning to Transform Your Life, Conversational Learning: An Experiential Approach to Knowledge Creation, Innovation in Professional Education: Steps on a Journey from Teaching to Learning, and Organizational Behavior: An Experiential Approach.

Lyn Sharratt
Dr Lyn Sharratt is a highly-accomplished practitioner, researcher, author, and presenter. She coordinates the doctoral internship program in Leadership and Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

She has been a school superintendent, curriculum consultant and administrator, and she has also taught all elementary grades and secondary-age students in inner-city and rural settings.

Dr Sharratt is lead author, with Michael Fullan, of Realization: The Change Imperative for Increasing District-Wide Reform (Corwin, 2009) and Putting FACES on the Data: What Great Leaders Do! (Corwin, 2012, published in English, Spanish and Arabic). She is lead author of Good to Great to Innovate: Recalculating the Route K-12, (Corwin, 2015) with Gale Harild and Leading Collaborative Learning: Empowering Excellence (Corwin, 2016) with Beate Planche.

Currently, she is an advisor for International School Leadership with the Ontario Principals’ Council, is an Author Consultant for Corwin Publishing and consults internationally, working with leaders at all levels, consultants, and teachers in Chile, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada to systematically increase all students’ achievement by putting FACES on the data and taking intentional action.

There are over 500 'Sharratt Schools' across the globe, representing thousands of students.

Alice Kolb
Alice Kolb is the President of Experience Based Learning Systems (EBLS) a research and development organization devoted to research and application of experiential learning in organizations worldwide. The EBLS program of research on Experiential Learning Theory continues in collaboration with an international network of researchers, practitioners and learning partners. As President of EBLS she facilitates research and practice initiatives of this international network.

She was a co-developer of the Kolb Learning Style Inventory 4.0 and was the leader of the team that developed the Kolb Educator Role Profile, an inventory designed to help educators apply experiential learning principles in their work. 

Her research focus on creating learning spaces conducive to deep learning led to her paper Learning styles and learning spaces: Enhancing experiential learning in higher education published in Academy of Management Learning and Education and Learning to play, playing to learn: A case study of a ludic learning space, published in the Journal of Organizational Change Management. She recently published a book titled Becoming an Experiential Educator: Principles and Practices of Experiential Learning with David Kolb.

With David Kold, she received the 2008 Educational Pioneers of the Year Award from the National Society for Experiential Education.