Associate Professor Carol Ann Oliver

A/Prof Carol Oliver is a nationally and internationally known expert in evidence-based science communication, with a strong interest in education innovation in online learning and teaching and interests in astrobiology and space science.

She is an Associate Professor with in the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES) in the Faculty of Science. She has supervised six PhD students, all but one as a primary supervisor. Four have graduated. Carol also has considerable industry experience as a journalist in print, radio, and television in the first third of her career. Carol is currently Online Learning Lead and Postgraduate Coursework Coordinator in BEES and co-Lead of the UNSW Online Learning and Innovation Community of Practice. She is also one of two Education Focussed Champions for the Faculty of Science.

She began her academic career in 2008. Between 2010 and 2015 she won a total of $5.5m in three grants for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Two of the grants raised the Mars Lab project at the Museum of Arts and Applied Sciences in two stages as an education project for high school students and a research facility, forming a living lab in the museum. The Mars Lab was a self-funding national and international project in which students could plan Mars missions and drive experimental Mars rovers in the Mars Yard from their classrooms. The third grant helped to transfer technology-enabled adaptive e-learning from the university environment into the high school environment. She is currently a Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council Linkage grant between a small group of UNSW researchers - led by Prof Dennis Del Favero - and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

Carol concentrates on creating and delivering fully online courses at UNSW with the aim of exploring the medium to reimagine online learning and teaching approaches - the latter of which has been reinforced in new approaches to online learning in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her four fully online courses (all electives) are BEES2741 Introduction to Astrobiology; BEES2680 Introduction to Science Communication; BEES6741 Astrobiology: Life in the Universe; and BEES6800 The Science of Science Communication. All four courses aim to engage students in the learning process, eliminating the need for rote learning, and none have a final exam.

Carol is a PLuS Alliance Fellow, in which she engages with colleagues at Arizona State University and King's College London to explore reimagining online education. She also has an Education-Focussed role. Externally, Carol is an elected member of the Australian Academy of Sciences' National Committee on Space and Radio Science and was nominated for, and elected to, full membership of the International Academy of Astronautics in 2006.