"I'm very honoured and pleased to join the leading European research institute to strengthen our common vision of learning innovations", emphasizes Stracke. He will be responsible for the research field "Open Education and Innovation", with a special focus on school education and organizational innovations.

Dr Stracke will contribute his long-term experience and expertise from his international research projects on eLearning, competence development, evaluation and quality management in learning, education and training. At the University of Duisburg-Essen, he developed, acquired, and managed innumerable research projects with budgets of several million euros, and he has successfully established and managed the TELIT Research Institute as elected Managing Director since its founding. "As a stimulating innovator, he has perfectly combined research, teaching, and international projects", stresses TELIT Director Dr Heimo H. Adelsberger.

Along with his position at the OUNL, Dr Stracke is a lifetime Advisory Professor at the East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai and has been an Adjunct Professor at the Korea National Open University (KNOU) in Seoul since 2008. He co-founded and established ICORE, the International Community for Open Education and Research in 2014, an organization that today has more than 300 members. And he is founder and director of eLC, the European Institute for Learning, Innovation and Cooperation.

As a strategy consultant with an international reputation, Dr. Stracke has extensive experience in leading large-scale projects and research teams, as well as numerous references for learning innovations and quality in all learning sectors. His work includes guiding and supporting institutions and public authorities to develop long-term policies and to improve organizational development.

Dr. Stracke’s main working fields are open education, learning innovations and quality, technology-enhanced learning, as well as evaluation, impact measurement and competence modelling in learning, education and training. He holds a PhD in Economics (Dr. rer. pol.) from the University of Duisburg-Essen on the integration of quality and competence development in eLearning and a Magister Artium (M.A.) in Educational Sciences from the University of Bonn on eLearning for young children at kindergarten age, written in the 1990s. Before joining the academic world, he was a consultant for professional eLearning providers and human resource agencies.

Christian M. Stracke has been an invited keynote speaker and PC member at many international conferences. He is the conference chair of LINQ, the annual international conference on Learning Innovations and Quality. He is the author and editor of numerous books, handbook chapters, articles, and standards on learning innovations and quality. In international standardisation, he is the elected chair of both international and European standardisation committees: ISO PC 288 on Quality Management for Education and CEN TC 353 on (e-‘)Learning, Education and Training.