15 Oct 2026
dialogue, reflection,
and design
15th Oct 2026
Keynote presenters
Dr Keith Heggart and Tim Kitchen
Keith Heggart is an educator and researcher whose work explores the relationship between education, democracy, and digital change. His research sits across three interconnected fields: civics and citizenship education, learning design and educational technology, and teacher education. Across these areas, he is interested in how education can respond to contemporary social and technological challenges, including misinformation and disinformation, democratic disengagement, generative AI, and the changing nature of teaching and learning in a digital society.
Dr Tim Kitchen has been an educator for over 30 years and is considered one of Australia’s leading voices in digital creativity and education innovation. A passionate advocate for empowering students and teachers through creative technologies, Tim has taught across primary, secondary, and higher education. Between 2013 and 2025, he has inspired thousands of students and teachers through his workshops and keynotes as the K–12 face of Adobe for Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. Tim is a bestselling author, podcaster and frequent presenter at national and international education events. Today, he continues to share his expertise and enthusiasm as an education consultant, exploring new ways to spark creativity in learning through his consultancy company CTL – Creative Teaching & Learning and his work as an Associate with The Next Word and a Senior Consultant with CulturePathAI.
Expression of interest
Are you passionate about sharing your insights and expertise? We’re inviting Expressions of Interest from individuals who wish to present at any of our upcoming symposiums. This is your chance to inspire, engage, and connect with a diverse audience by showcasing your work, research, or ideas. We welcome innovative and thought-provoking contributions.
Register to attend
Don’t miss out on the opportunity to attend this exciting half-day symposium.
Register now to secure your place and be part of an inspiring day filled with thought-provoking presentations, networking opportunities, and collaborative discussions.
Our Theme
For the Teaching and Learning Symposium theme Assessment, we invite submissions that critically examine the design, implementation, and impact of assessment in contemporary higher education, especially our new assessment architecture.
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We welcome contributions that showcase innovative, inclusive, and authentic assessment practices aligned with learning outcomes and graduate capabilities. This may include assured assessment, authentic and real-world tasks, feedback design, assessment for learning, use of rubrics and standards, peer and self-assessment, and strategies that promote academic integrity in an era of generative AI. Approaches that reduce assessment burden while enhancing learning, as well as those that foreground equity, accessibility, and transparency, are particularly encouraged.
Submissions may present empirical research (e.g., Scholarship of Teaching and Learning), evaluative case studies, or theoretically informed reflections grounded in practice. We are interested in work that demonstrates how assessment drives learning, supports student success, and informs curriculum improvement.
Presenters should clearly articulate:
- The assessment approach or innovation,
- Its alignment with learning outcomes and pedagogy,
- Evidence of impact (e.g., student learning, engagement, integrity, or progression), and
- Transferable insights for practice.
The symposium aims to surface rigorous, reflective, and practice-based work that repositions assessment as a central mechanism for enhancing learning and educational quality.
Program
After registering, you will receive an email with the Zoom link to attend. Please ensure you are logged into your Zoom client on your computer to participate.
Abstract
Generative AI is forcing both schools and higher education to reconsider some long-standing assumptions about assessment. Yet, while the challenges are similar, the responses across the two sectors are often quite different. Schools bring experience in designing scaffolded assessment, observing learning over time, providing structured feedback, and working within tightly defined curriculum and assessment frameworks. Higher education, meanwhile, has been experimenting with new approaches to assessment security, authentic assessment, AI-supported learning, and the redesign of tasks for increasingly diverse and digitally mediated learning environments.
In this conversation, Tim Kitchen and Keith Heggart explore what schools and universities might learn from each other as they respond to generative AI. Rather than focusing on detecting or preventing AI use, the discussion will consider what AI reveals about the purposes and limitations of existing assessment practices. How can we design assessment that provides meaningful evidence of learning? What role should process, dialogue, feedback and student agency play? And where can AI be productively incorporated rather than excluded?
The session will identify practical lessons across both sectors and consider how greater dialogue between school and higher education educators might support more authentic, equitable and future-focused approaches to assessment.
Abstract
Initial Teacher Education should prepare students for practice; hence, there is an opportunity to explore more than learning outcomes by taking advantage of the form of the assessment task. Teachers need presentation skills as well as knowledge and the ability to read a syllabus. They need to embrace the practices of reflection and being a learner. Examples of how I try to achieve this will be demonstrated and discussed.
Abstract
University markers (sessional academics) are increasingly required to navigate a complex and evolving tertiary assessment environment. Key challenges for the marker include the diverse needs of student cohorts, competing workload priorities, time constraints, academic integrity, the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence and varied expectations around assessment and feedback
Abstract
Assessment in management education must connect disciplinary knowledge with real-world practice while supporting student engagement and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI). This paper examines a four-component assessment design in MM203, Management Practices in Responsible Organisations, at the University of New England. The design combines an individual ESG and greenwashing report on a real company; a reflective report documenting engagement with formative feedback from Studiosity and/or human sources; five fortnightly discussion forums; and a final examination with restricted access to external resources and technologies. The report requires transparent acknowledgement and critical review of AI-assisted work, while the examination is intended to verify the assurance of learning.
Drawing on authentic assessment, constructive alignment, feedback literacy and social constructivist perspectives, the paper reviews the conceptual and pedagogical foundations of the assessment design and presents results from a student-perception survey. Preliminary evidence comes from an internal student-perception survey with 18 MM203 respondents; key assessment items contain 15 valid responses. All 15 respondents rated the ESG report as moderately or very interesting. Twelve found the feedback-reflection task moderately or very engaging, while three found it not at all engaging. Forum responses highlighted relevant questions and participation incentives, alongside less frequent endorsement of peer-learning value. Open comments identified opportunities to improve task clarity, reflection requirements and forum marking guidance.
These findings suggest that perceived authenticity and engagement vary across assessment components. The paper contributes a practical assessment design case and identifies refinements for making feedback uptake, responsible AI judgement and meaningful peer interaction more visible.
Keywords: authentic assessment; feedback literacy; responsible AI; student engagement; management education.
Abstract
This project proposes an AI-enabled, student-centred diagramming tool, complemented by the integration of a SmartSketch AI tutor bot, to enhance engagement, accessibility, and learning outcomes in Introductory Microeconomics (ECON101). Drawing on student feedback and teaching experience, the project addresses a critical barrier: students often spend excessive time and cognitive effort constructing diagrams rather than developing conceptual understanding and analytical responses.
The diagramming tool incorporates pre-configured economic curves, intuitive labelling, and grid-based alignment to minimise technical complexity while maintaining academic rigour. The SmartSketch AI tutor bot functions as an embedded support agent, guiding students through diagram construction, prompting critical thinking, and providing immediate, context-specific feedback based on unit materials. This integration enables a seamless learning experience across practice, teaching, and assessment environments, supporting students with diverse digital and language capabilities.
Student involvement is central through iterative feedback, usability testing, and reflective engagement with the AI tutor. Anticipated outcomes include improved engagement, reduced cognitive load, enhanced diagram accuracy, and deeper conceptual understanding. This project advances inclusive and participatory teaching by leveraging student voice and AI to foster equitable and meaningful learning experiences.
