Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia
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* HERDSA Connect: The owners and tenants’ dilemma of higher education
*. HERDSA SoTL SIG -- This Friday! -- Exploring co-design and achieving impact
* AAUT & HERDSA National Webinar Series 2026 – Session 3
* Important notice re HERDSA SoTL Modules Access Temporarily Disabled
* Submission deadline extended: The second International Conference on Globalisation/Deglobalisation in Languages, Education, Culture and Communication (GLECC2026)
* Upcoming Online Seminar - Designing Online Learning as Garden Paths: AI Agents, Structure and Discovery (REGISTER NOW)
* Beyond PERMA, Te Whare Tapa Whā & Traditional Wellbeing Frameworks? | Techweek 2026
* On the Shoulders of Giants: Data sovereignty and digital self-determination
* CRADLE Seminar Series: ‘Voice-First Written Assessment: Evidence, access, and ecological authenticity’
* CAULLT webinar - From GenAI to Agentic Learning: How AI is Reshaping Universities Worldwide
* Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE): Exploring the Future of Learning with GenAI Symposium
* AAEE2026 Call for Papers and Workshop Proposals
* New articles in Higher Education Research and Development
To submit an announcement for this list complete the online form at http://herdsa.org.au/herdsa-notices
A full list of HERDSA Notices is online at http://www.herdsa.org.au/latest-news
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HERDSA Connect: The owners and tenants’ dilemma of higher education
Daniela Castro de Jong , 13 May 2026
What do the real estate market in Sydney and higher education have in common? Daniela explores how we can lean into kindness to navigate these increasingly demanding climates.
Read more: https://herdsa.org.au/herdsa-connect/owners-and-tenants-dilemma-higher-e...
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HERDSA SoTL SIG -- This Friday! -- Exploring co-design and achieving impact
Friday, 15 May 2026 - 12–1pm AEST (NSW/VIC/QLD)
Join us for our May SIG on Exploring co-design and achieving impact: experiences from educational developers and learning designers.
SoTL does not happen in isolation. It relies on collaborative effort across roles, disciplines, and stakeholders. In this session, we will explore how co-design works in the education space, how to recognise and respond to emerging opportunities, and how to navigate tensions while moving projects from ideas to outcomes.
We will hear from a senior educational developer and a learning designer, who will share their co-design journeys and practical strategies for engaging stakeholders, managing multidisciplinary projects, and building impact. The session will also discuss how to take ownership, develop leadership in project work, and identify publishing opportunities in educational development.
This session will be relevant to early-career learning designers who are seeking pathways into co-design work and to more experienced designers and educational developers who want to reflect on how co-design can lead to sustained impact.
Presenters: Dr Carmen Vallis (USyd) and Tianya Chen (USyd)
Facilitator: Dr Jennifer Sun (SIG Co-Leader)
Register here: https://unisq.zoom.us/meeting/register/LCd16NSwTD2N9ecfXKWzOg
*Register for one or all our SIGs this year!*
To stay connected, join our LinkedIn group:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14343410/
Further information: Contact the HERDSA SoTL SIG at herdsa.sotl.sig@gmail.com
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AAUT & HERDSA National Webinar Series 2026 – Session 3
Thursday, 28 May 2026 1:00pm – 2:00pm (AEST)
Designing Inclusive Student Experiences: Advancing Diversity in Higher Education
Join us for the third session in the 2026 AAUT & HERDSA National Webinar Series, exploring how universities can create more inclusive and supportive student experiences for diverse cohorts.
Chaired by A/Prof Janis Wardrop, UNSW (HERDSA NSW Branch), this panel features Prof Creina Day (ANU – 2024 Citation), Dr Diana Mendez (JCU – 2023 Program Award), and A/Prof Rosalie Goldsmith (UTS – 2022 Program Award). Panelists will discuss approaches to designing curriculum, assessment, and co-curricular experiences that foster belonging, equity, and student success.
The session will also explore institutional leadership, policy, and emerging innovations shaping inclusive practice across higher education.
Date: Thursday, 28 May 2026
Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm (AEST)
Location: Online via Microsoft Teams
Further information: Register here: https://tinyurl.com/2pcck9kv
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Important notice re HERDSA SoTL Modules Access Temporarily Disabled
Please note that due to a recent security incident, access to the 'Canvas free-for-teacher' site that hosts our HERDSA SoTL Modules has been temporarily disabled. Canvas is currently working hard on rectifying this issue and hopefully access to the AMAZING redeveloped HERDSA SoTL Modules will be available again very soon.
Apologies for any inconvenience.
The 10 modules have been specifically designed for the HERDSA community. The modules are relevant for national and international scholars, acting as a capacity-building resource to assist in developing and refining SoTL knowledge and skills.The aim of the HERDSA SoTL modules is to introduce you to the nature, purpose and process of the scholarship of teaching and learning, and act as a capacity-building resource to assist you in developing and refining your SoTL knowledge and skills. Please consider accessing, viewing and using the HERDSA SoTL Modules to support your Scholarship (free for HERDSA members).
Further information: For non HERDSA members please enquire at https://forms.office.com/r/qtb6nfxqAd
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Submission deadline extended: The second International Conference on Globalisation/Deglobalisation in Languages, Education, Culture and Communication (GLECC2026)
Extended to 18 May 2026
The past two decades have witnessed remarkable advancements in the studies into Education, Second and Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting, Cultural Studies, and Communication. This growth, evident in both the number of active researchers and the volume of scholarly throughput and outcomes, can be largely attributed to the forces of globalisation. Consequently, adopting the globalisation perspective is timely and provides a natural framework for connecting these diverse yet interlinked disciplines.
This conference aims to bring together researchers, educators, practitioners, and policymakers from the realms of education, foreign and second languages, cultural studies, translation, interpreting, and communication to disseminate research outcomes, share insights, discuss findings, exchange visions, and identify challenges and trends in an interactive and immersive multidisciplinary environment.
Keynote speakers confirmed:
- “Translation, Chinese Texts, and World Literature” by Professor Yifeng Sun, University of Macau, China.
- “Confucianism's Global Potential: Fresh Perspectives on Fathering From the Sixth Century to Now” by Dr Derek Hird, Lancaster University, UK.
The conference is co-organised by AT Publishing in association with its journals namely, Research in Education Curriculum and Pedagogy: Global Perspectives (RECAP) [ISSN: 2977-1633]; New Perspectives on Languages (NPL) [ISSN: 3033-490X]; The International Journal of Chinese and English Translation & Interpreting (IJCETI) [ISSN: 2753-6149]; and Recent Advances in Humanities Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) [ISSN: 2978-1345]. There is a “conference first” policy in place. Selected papers will be invited to further develop into full journal articles free of APCs.
Conference proceedings will be published open access with an ISBN.
Further information: https://glecc.org/2026
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Upcoming Online Seminar - Designing Online Learning as Garden Paths: AI Agents, Structure and Discovery (REGISTER NOW)
19th May 2026; 12.30pm
Seminar Title: Designing Online Learning as Garden Paths: AI Agents, Structure and Discovery
Presented by: Dr Christopher Moore, Academic Lead for AI-Enabled Education, University of Wollongong
Date & Time: 19th May 2026; 12.30pm
Christopher Moore is an Associate Professor in Media and Communication and the Academic Lead for AI-Enabled Education at the University of Wollongong, where he leads two institutional projects on student success and educator capability. His scholarly background spans digital and social media, games and experience design, futures thinking, and persona studies, and his current work brings these traditions together to consider how AI-enabled learning environments can be designed with care, criticality, and a commitment to learner agency. He has built and deployed Generative AI tools across a range of subjects since 2021, and used multiple AI tools to prepare this material.
In Piet Oudolf's planting philosophy, as Noel Kingsbury (2016) describes it, the garden path is designed openness, held together by intentional matrices and structures that remain entirely welcoming of diversity. Cultivating online learning experiences can also serve as garden paths, with AI teaching agents that support discovery and direction, enhancing human agency. In this talk, Christopher Moore, Academic Lead for AI-Enabled Education at the University of Wollongong, presents a four-layer agent design architecture and a working cast of named agents. The layers operate as the matrix and the named cast as the structure supporting the garden path of the online learning experience in his courses. The talk draws on his lived experience as an autistic academic, treating masking and scripting as a productive design language for predictable, navigable interactions that provide learning support while requiring the learner to perform the cognitive work. Kingsbury, N 2016, ‘ONE: Planting – the big picture’, in Planting, Workman Publishing, United States.
Session Registration
To register for the seminar, please use the following link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScwtrvW_RueWlGxrhwULuTCoMfJ7we8...
The team will send you a calendar invitation, which will include the link to the online seminar.
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Beyond PERMA, Te Whare Tapa Whā & Traditional Wellbeing Frameworks? | Techweek 2026
Tue 19 May | 4:00–4:50pm
Across higher education, health, organisational, and public policy settings and research projects, many wellbeing approaches continue to rely on psychology, health and medical models such as PERMA, resilience, and mental health outcome measures.
This Techweek 2026 session will introduce the new digitised Universal Wellbeing Evaluation; underpinned by a multi-disciplinary and authentically holistic evidence-based Universal Wellbeing model.
This Model and the associated Evaluation emerged from 17 year wellbeing research programme conducted in New Zealand.
The session explores primordial prevention Universal Wellbeing and systematic approaches to measuring and acting on wellbeing data at scale. The Universal Wellbeing Evaluation also supports practitioners and researchers to advance the positive wellbeing of those they work with through evidence based decisions, supports and services.
Participants will complete a guided evaluation process and receive an individual wellbeing profile and report back.
Register Now: https://events.humanitix.com/discover-your-personal-wellbeing-profile-or...
Further information: https://events.humanitix.com/discover-your-personal-wellbeing-profile-or...
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On the Shoulders of Giants: Data sovereignty and digital self-determination
Tuesday 26 May, 12-1pm AEST
In conversation with Distinguished Professor Maggie Walter Emerita and Dr Bret Stephenson
What is at stake as higher education moves deeper into data-driven decision making about students?
In this session, Maggie and Bret invite us to look critically at how data is produced, interpreted, and used within institutions. They will explore how ideas of “helping”, “objectivity”, and “evidence” can obscure power, reproduce harm, or foreclose alternative ways of knowing and governing — particularly for Indigenous peoples, disabled people, and other students who have experience of structural inequality.
This discussion is for educators, institutional leaders, researchers, and others grappling with the practical and ethical challenges of data and AI in universities.
Registration and more information here:
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/on-the-shoulders-of-giants-data-sovereig...
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CRADLE Seminar Series: ‘Voice-First Written Assessment: Evidence, access, and ecological authenticity’
Tuesday 26 May - 10.30 am to 12.00 pm (AEST)
If AI allows students to generate fluent prose independently of ideational labour, how can educators assess their students' disciplinary reasoning? Register now for CRADLE's seminar on 26 May to hear the University of Oxford's Kelly Webb-Davies outline Voice-First Written Assessment, a two-stage model developed as a response to this evidentiary crisis.
Even before generative AI, requiring performance in prestige academic prose risked distorting or suppressing students’ best thinking and, as a result, undermining valid inference about disciplinary reasoning. Now that fluent prose can be generated using AI, the already unstable link between polished prose and the thinking it was assumed to represent has been entirely severed. Detector-led and disclosure-based responses cannot repair this evidentiary chain. Voice-First Written Assessment is a two-stage assessment model that reconfigures where and how evidence of students’ reasoning is secured and interpreted. The seminar will present the evidentiary logic and operational design of the model alongside implementation examples and an overview of planned pilot applications.
To learn more about Voice-First Written Assessment and its potential applications, join us at the special time of 10.30 am (AEST) in person at Deakin Downtown or online.
Further information: https://cradle-seminar-voice-first-written-assessment.eventbrite.com.au/...
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CAULLT webinar - From GenAI to Agentic Learning: How AI is Reshaping Universities Worldwide
29 May 2026
On 29 May, Dr Maria Spies (HolonIQ / QS) joins CAULLT to unpack how universities worldwide are adopting AI — and the impact of agentic AI on learner behaviour, learning processes and educational models.
This session explores:
- insights on success factors for AI adoption
- who is leading AI initiatives
- changes in how individuals think about work, learning and workflow
- implications for institutional strategy in the context of higher education.
Further information: For details about this webinar and how to register, see our web page https://tinyurl.com/28hc6ty2
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Centre for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE): Exploring the Future of Learning with GenAI Symposium
Wednesday 3 June 2026
Generative AI is reshaping how students learn, think and solve problems - raising important questions about cognitive offloading in higher education. This symposium will examine the opportunities and risks of AI-assisted learning, with a focus on assessment design, evolving academic and professional practice, and the future of lifelong learning. Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on Wednesday 3 June 2026. Register now to secure your place.
Further information: https://go.unimelb.edu.au/8mt2
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AAEE2026 Call for Papers and Workshop Proposals
22 June 2026
The 37th Australasian Association for Engineering Education Annual Conference will be hosted at UNSW from 13–16 December, bringing together engineering educators from across the region to UNSW. The conference will provide a forum for participants to present scholarly work, share innovative teaching practices, and engage in interactive workshops that support professional learning and collaboration.
Centred on the theme “Make the Impossible, Possible”, the event invites the community to critically examine and reimagine the future of engineering education, exploring how we can respond to emerging challenges, harness new opportunities, and shape more effective and inclusive learning environments.
Submissions for papers and workshop proposals opens 4th May 2026 and will close on 22 June 2026.
The conference will feature Star Wars–themed social events, offering an opportunity for delegates to connect in a more informal setting. May The Discourse Be With You!
Further information: aaee2026/call-for-papers or contact aaee2026@unsw.edu.au
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New articles in Higher Education Research and Development
Merit, metrics, and morality: a qualitative study of academic recruitment discourses in top-tier Chinese universities, Xing Xu & Ly Thi Tran, https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2658822
Burnout and institutional support among Ukrainian academic staff during wartime, Natalia Tsybuliak, Uliana Kolomiiets, Hanna Mytsyk, Anastasiia Popova, Hanna Lopatina, Artem Polulyakhov & Yana Suchikova, https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2657950
Student self-initiated self-assessment in higher education: a cross-disciplinary perspective, Ke Jiang, Gavin T. L. Brown & Lawrence May, https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2660998
‘The harder you work, the luckier you get?’: cruel optimism in rural students’ affective transitions into an elite Chinese university, Tongyu Wu & Niancai Liu, https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2654605
Understanding the journey to higher education: decision-making insights from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, Melissa Fong-Emmerson, Claire Lambert, Braden Hill & Maria M. Ryan, https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2660994
University-industry knowledge collaborations’ intangible outcomes for students and their perceived employability: the mediating role of student engagement, Quyen Thao Dang, Nghia Thi Minh Luu, Hang Thanh Pham, Son Ngoc Ho & Robert McClelland, https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2660995
From classroom to career: identity transformation as a key to graduate employability, Peter Cebon, Julia L. Hill, Veysel Akcakin, Sally Male, Rowan Doyle & Jillian Kenny, https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2655395
Collaborative curriculum work as bricolage – insights from a collective autoethnography, Sarah Barradell, Andisheh Bastani, Beatriz IR De Oliveira & Leo Ng, https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2026.2655397
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In the spirit of reconciliation HERDSA acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australasia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their Elders past, present and emerging.