From Generative AI to heutagogy, learn how the annual conference for education professionals working with tech explored the big themes set to dominate in 2025.
When December rolls around each year, it generally heralds two things in the Australian and New Zealand Higher Education space. First, the end of the academic year is nigh with assessment re-sits and final results-entering underway alongside gearing up for Semester 1.
And the other? ASCILITE’s annual conference is here again! It’s an event not to be missed by researchers and academics, staff with third space or education technology roles, or senior leaders responsible for education portfolios.
The importance of an ed-tech community
The Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education is “an incorporated not-for-profit professional association for those engaged in the educational use of technologies in tertiary education”. Its conference is known for robust and passionate discussions around the intersections of pedagogy and theory with learning technologies that support effective and meaningful practice.
In his welcome address, University of Melbourne’s Gregor Kennedy spoke about the strength of ASCILITE as a “community for sharing, connecting and showing ideas off”; a space for a diverse group of “tech-head nerds” (Gregor’s words, not mine!) in various roles, coming together to discuss teaching and learning topics with the same motivation and intent – but bringing different perspectives. And so it proved to be.
I attended the conference with my colleague, Robert Vick, and we spent three and a half days immersed in this world, exploring the conference’s theme: Navigating the Terrain: Emerging Frontiers in Learning Spaces, Pedagogies, and Technologies. PebblePad has a close and long-standing relationship with the ASCILITE community and, as well as being proud sponsors, we always relish the opportunity to join the sessions and become part of the conversations around exceptional learning, teaching and assessment design as well as practice and research.
AI, AI and more AI – impacts on learning and assessment
It will come as a surprise to no one that the presentations on AI – specifically the application of Generative AI tools – featured very heavily in the program. If we take the conference theme of frontiers, the rapid pervasion of AI into various aspects of Higher Education feels something akin to the wild west. Arguably one of the most disruptive technologies affecting the way we design and enact learning and assessment activities, the advent of GenAI is providing fertile ground for the re-evaluation of current and common practices.
One of the things that stood out for me was how quickly educators and researchers have responded to this challenge. In his keynote presentation, Associate Professor Jason Lodge pointed out that the gap between when research is published and when it’s being performed in practice at scale is usually around 17 years! In the case of GenAI, however, we can already see how rapidly the sector has been to not just respond but engage in attempts to understand and predict where this technology will lead us next and what it means for learning.
On day one, Margaret Bearman, renowned researcher with CRADLE, took us over ‘old and new terrain’ when thinking about AI – that how we talk about AI, define AI and experience AI all matter. She cautioned against getting caught up in polarities – human vs. machine; dystopia vs. utopia; students as plagiarists vs. students as victims. And indeed, many of the discussions over the three days did focus on the ways in which we position AI and its disruption.
There were several approaches described to conceptualise and investigate the implications of GenAI in Higher Education: surveying student and educator perceptions; how the tools are actually being used; sharing possible designs and early prototypes; and much more. My takeaway? It is clear that no matter the difficulties being thrown up by the rapid advances in GenAI, the community is across it, actively engaging with it and most of all, sharing questions and responses.
Supporting learning in 2025 and beyond – theory, research, practice
The strength of the conference was exactly as Gregor Kennedy noted in his welcoming address: how, when aligned, the strands of research, theory and practice bring people together who may be coming to the topic or issue with the same motivation or intent – but from differing perspectives. The resulting conversations sparked by this starting point is where the magic happens at ASCILITE.
Leading the conversations at the conference were, of course, the keynote speakers. Professor Susan McKenney in her Educational Design Research presentation raised questions of how technology affordances (and limitations) impact on learning initiatives. She asked “Are we helping people? Are we meeting needs? And are we designing learning experiences that make a difference?”. These questions fundamentally underpin the work of Higher Education and were the basis for the themes we saw emerge in so many of the presentations and papers.
In speaking to the various roles that Education Design Researchers inhabit – Consultant, Designer, Researcher – McKenney’s talk clearly resonated with the third space professionals attending, whose day-to-day work involves the analysis, design, evaluation and iteration needed to help provide solutions for teaching and learning challenges.
The second keynote speaker, Dr. Lisa Marie Blaschke, took us on a journey through the history of heutagogy in the 25 years since its inception by Hase and Kenyon with a fireside chat with Chris Kenyon himself. Key characteristics such as learner self-determination, self-regulation and agency are vital to this approach to learning and teaching with adult learners, along with reflection/metacognition and non-linear design.
These are areas where we see ePortfolio practice leading the way, providing approaches to help surface the processes of learning and help learners understand themselves as learners. It is always affirming to see so many of the things we’ve been saying about PebblePad’s pedagogical underpinnings – or Pebblegogy – for the last 20 years reflected in Chris and Lisa Marie’s conversation.
Aligning Higher Education within the Australian policy landscape
Jason Lodge rounded off the keynote talks with a discussion focusing on the importance of evidence-informed education. He situated some of the discussion topics from the conference within the context of Australian policy landscape, noting key recommendations from the Australian Universities Accord, and where there is a need for the response from Higher Education to be evidence-based. Jason’s keynote was a timely reminder that the conference’s conversations do have effects that go beyond the classroom and can impact on Higher Ed government policy itself.
Finally, as ASCILITE 2024 drew to a close, it felt like there has never been a more important time for a truly collaborative and passionate community that supports the important work around designing, implementing and assessing great learning experiences. We’re grateful at PebblePad to be so involved in this community, providing a platform that we truly hope will change the way learning is designed, experienced and assessed so that learners can articulate their unique points of difference.
- We’d love to continue the conversations that began at the ASCILITE conference, so please get in touch with your Customer Success Manager or drop us a note through our contact form.
