Current Position and Past Experience
H.L. Maston is an internationally recognized Distance Educator with experience as a presenter, researcher, author, developer and instructor on all areas related to Distance Education with a special passion for communication, social networking and virtual worlds.

She has written and published many works, including “Digital Fluency”, “Transactional Distance in the Virtual Environment”, “Building Trust in Virtual Environments,” “Systems Theory of Communication: Its influence on the developmental strategies in Distance Education,” and ”How to systematically harness transactional distance for identity development in Second Life in order to measurably increase academic performance."

Education, Honors and Achievements
She holds a Doctoral degree in Educational Leadership and Change from Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara California. Additionally, she holds a Master of Science: Masters of Distance Education and 5 Graduate Certificates in various components of D.E. from University of Maryland University College and a Bachelors of Art degree in Speech Communication from Northwest Nazarene University.

Heidi's Doctoral Dissertation is titled, "A Delphi Method Study on Triggering Transactional Distance to Improve Students' Learning: The Instructor's Rubric." The results of this study indicate that there are certain combinations of tools and purposeful interactions that can create an improved learning environment for the student. This data produced the Instructor’s Engagement Rubric 1.0 which is available for use. This dissertation can be found here.

Personal Details and Community Involvement
Maston served on the Board of Directors for the Alliance for Distance Education in California (CA Chapter of the USDLA) 2004 – 2009 and was President of ADEC from 2008 – 2009.

Heidi is a member of numerous state, national and global organizations dedicated to Distance Education, research and education.

Connect
You can find Maston on the web at CarpeLearning and on LinkedIn.

You can also find Maston via her website.