Meet our team members who bring their expertise and enthusiasm to drive innovation and inspire our community
Join us in our mission to revolutionise education through gamification, as our dedicated team continues to innovate, create, and inspire.
Founders
Dr Jessica Helmi
Dr Jessica Helmi is a Lecturer in MBA at the Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University. As an educator, Dr. Helmi has received several awards and recognition for her teaching excellence and leadership. She has taught a range of undergraduate and postgraduate marketing, innovation, and entrepreneurship subjects. Her teaching approach emphasises the use of gamification strategies to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes. She is actively involved in leading industry-engaged learning, teaching and research projects and is the project leader of gamifiED. Through this initiative, she aims to promote innovative teaching practices and develop impactful gamification approaches for learning and teahcing purposes.
Dr Alvedi Sabani
Dr Alvedi Sabani is a Lecturer in MBA at the Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University. Prior to joining RMIT, he was a business analyst with experience across various industries including information and communications technologies, digital media, government, healthcare and education. His research interests are in the areas of information systems including blockchain, digital transformation, electronic government, gamification and technology adoption.
Dr Jonathan Kolieb
Dr Jonathan Kolieb is Senior Lecturer in International Law at RMIT University and Co-Director of the RMIT Business and Human Rights Centre.
Jonathan’s research and teaching interests focus on international law and global governance issues. Current projects include one on the human rights obligations of companies in conflict-affected areas and another on embedding greater conflict-sensitivity into ESG and corporate sustainability standards and reporting. For the past few years, Jonathan has been part of a fruitful collaboration with Australian Red Cross around achieving responsible business conduct in conflict zones. This collaboration has produced plain language guidance and tools to strengthen knowledge of international humanitarian law amongst the corporate sector, including several innovative online educational offerings – for university students and professionals.
Jonathan's work has been published in leading academic journals and mainstream press. He has consulted to the United Nations and routinely provides expert advice to civil society organisations. Jonathan has been a visiting researcher at the Australian National University, George Washington University in DC and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He holds degrees from the University of Melbourne (PhD; B.A./LL.B.), the University of California-Berkeley (LL.M; M.A.) and Monash University (B.A.-Honours).
Dr Natalya Turkina
10+ years of professional experience in the Research and Education, Business and Government sectors in Europe and Australia. I am passionate about research in the areas of Social Entrepreneurship, Stakeholder Engagement, Cross-Sector Partnerships, Corporate Social and Environmental Sustainability and Responsibility. In my research, I critically look at how international and national institutional contexts condition the ways organisations and individuals understand and practice business sustainability and responsibility. My research projects are international and comparative in their nature and involve national contexts of such countries as Australia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Russia and Botswana. In my work, I aim to translate my theoretical and practical knowledge and teaching experience into ethical and sustainable business praxis.
Advisory
Associate Professor Ling Mei Cong
Associate Professor Ling Mei Cong is an experienced leader in higher education and an expert on curriculum design in business and law. She is currently the Deputy Dean, Learning and Teaching at the Graduate School of Business and Law, RMIT University. Ling Mei has over 20 years of experience at the tertiary level in the Asia Pacific region, and is a fellow of the ACCA. She holds a PhD in accounting from Curtin University. Ling Mei’s main research areas include technology-enhanced learning, corporate governance, financial reporting quality, and sustainability reporting. Her publications appear in leading journals including, for example, Accounting Education, Technovation, and Journal of Strategic Marketing. Ling Mei is committed to advancing digital pedagogies and innovative teaching methods. In 2022, she won the prestigious Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation Award for contributions to student learning, a national recognition for outstanding educators. Her recent projects include virtual reality simulations (Project XR Transcend for soft skills development), gamification (Streets of My Town Game), and a virtual assistant project (VA Aiila in a large law course). She is also committed to embedding indigenous perspectives into the curriculum to promote cultural awareness and understanding. Her impact in higher education is evident through her interviews and media appearances, including those in Harvard Business Publishing Education, Australia Financial Review, and AACSB Insights.
Gillian Vesty
Associate Professor Gillian Vesty, Deputy Dean L&T AISSC, CoBL strives for impactful teaching and research fostered by strong industry network connections. Aiming to address wicked problems through innovative designs, Gillian engages with serious games industry to build games that expose challenging industry problems that support continued experimentation by students and practising professionals. Gillian has guided her research and teaching activities toward social impact case studies that address health and wellbeing challenges. This includes budgeting, performance evaluation and resource constraints in the healthcare industry and in public hospitals where costs have burgeoned due to the pandemic or dealing with wellbeing literacy in the workplace. Taking a value-based healthcare perspective, her students have considered the emerging trends and the way different countries deal with preventative health to reduce the burden on society. Supported by industry partners, Gillian has engaged in research that has practical educational outcomes to provide students with agile ways of working and job-ready skills that are recognised by employers. Gillian recognises that simulated artefacts in the form of serious games foster continued debate, provide educational insights and hybridised expertise along with a powerful vehicle for ongoing experimental research.
Ishpal Sandhu
With an established background in educational studies and professional development, I specialize in the realm of online learning, educational technology, and digital transformation. As a seasoned leader in the field, I possess a deep understanding of change management, pedagogy, and andragogy, further enhanced by my proficiency in AACSB (AOL). My expertise lies in providing insightful subject matter knowledge in this ever-evolving domain.
My lifelong fascination with technology empowers me to recommend innovative solutions and contribute to the development of technologies aimed at enhancing learning and optimizing processes. This fusion of passion and expertise equips me to drive advancements in the field, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in modern education.
HDR Candidates
Stella Stefanny
As the former Chair of the Department of Online Learning Communication Science at Universitas Pelita Harapan, Indonesia, Stella played a pivotal role in establishing online education in Indonesia. Her remarkable contributions were acknowledged when she was honoured as an "Asia Global Innovator" at the Turnitin Awards in 2019 and invited as a key panellist at Times Higher Education Live Asia in 2020. She has made significant strides in ensuring the quality of online courses in Indonesian higher education and led the first accreditation team for her school in 2019. Alongside her teaching achievements, she has secured grants from prestigious institutions such as The World Bank and the Ministry of Education Indonesia. These grants have enabled her to develop cutting-edge web-based applications for online course quality assurance, gamifying design thinking courses, and developing micro-credential programs for game developers. Her teaching philosophy revolves around providing a personalized education experience, catering to the unique needs, interests, and learning styles of each student. She takes great pride in her role as a facilitator and coach, fostering an environment that encourages active learning and critical thinking. Her passion lies in empowering students to become self-motivated, lifelong learners.
Viktor Arity
Over the past decade, Viktor’s passion in delivering quality learning and teaching (L&T) has results in several accomplishments, including being recipient of a Fellowship in Advance HE along with numerous L&T awards, including the KPMG Acclaimed Educator of the Year Award. Viktor has also contributed to AISSC’s Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) publications, as part of his role as early career academic.
Viktor is an active advocate of embedding gamification into curriculum design. In the past years, Viktor has played a key role in developing and implementing serious games into multiple courses across CoBL. It is evident that these implementations have been successful with student engagement and learning experiences being significantly improved. This is also acknowledged in student feedback and CES/OSI results. Viktor is also a successful applicant for the CoBL 2023 Teaching and Learning Innovation fund.
