Professor Som Naidu is former Pro Vice-Chancellor (Flexible Learning), and Director of the Centre for Flexible Learning at the University of the South Pacific, and currently Principal Associate of Technology, Education and Design Associates—a Melbourne based educational technology consultancy service.
Dr. Naidu has spent most of his professional life in the higher education sector in a variety of roles to do with enhancing learning and teaching in open, flexible, distance, online learning and distributed learning, and education more generally in a variety of jurisdictions. He possesses undergraduate qualifications in Education from the University of Waikato in New Zealand and graduate qualifications in Educational Technology from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. A former president of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Som has served as Executive Editor of the journal Distance Education (since 1997). In May 2014 the Open University of Sri Lanka awarded Dr. Naidu a D.Litt. (Honoris Causa), in recognition of his extensive contribution to the field of open, flexible, distance and e-learning both regionally and internationally. And in July 2020, Advance Higher Education, UK, admitted Dr. Naidu as a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy for his commitment, contribution, and strategic leadership in the scholarship of learning and teaching globally.