Dr Mary Simpson is Associate Dean (Teacher Education) at the College of Education at the University of Otago. She moved to Otago from the position of Director of Teacher Education and Undergraduate Studies in the College of Education at Massey University where she had also held the position of Online Coordinator for the College of Education and chaired the Online Learning and Development Group.

Mary has researched and published in the field of distance education / elearning nationally and internationally. Her publications include articles in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, Quarterly Review of Distance Education, The American Journal of Distance Education and a chapter in Towards virtualization: Open and distance learning published by Kogan Page and Effective Blended Learning Practices: Evidence-based perspectives in ICT-facilitated education published by IGI Global. She has presented conference papers on distance education at national and international conferences.

Mary's interest in distance education developed first as a distance student, later as a lecturer who developed and taught courses for distance students and then as an administrator of a distance education unit with the Palmerston North College of Education.

Mary was a developer of the online teacher education programme at Massey University. This programme received the DEANZ applied teaching award in 1997.

Mary has been part of research teams looking at initial teacher education, elearning policy, evaluation of online environments and the student experience of distance and online learning. Her ongoing research interests are in distance and online education and teacher education.