Pre-conference Workshops
Workshop 1: Sunday 29 Nov, 10am – 1pm
A/Professor Rene Kizilcec (Cornell University)
Analysing Educational Discourse at Scale with AI: A Hands-On Workshop Using Sandpiper
Educational researchers increasingly have access to rich discourse data from classrooms, tutoring sessions, online discussions, advising interactions, and AI-supported learning environments. Yet analysing these data at scale remains difficult: manual coding is slow, expensive, and hard to reproduce, while generic AI tools often lack the structure, transparency, privacy protections, and validation needed for rigorous research.
This hands-on workshop introduces participants to AI-assisted annotation of educational discourse data using Sandpiper, a tool developed through the National Tutoring Observatory to support scalable, theory-informed analysis of learning interactions. The workshop will explain how AI annotation works, when it is useful, and what researchers need to consider when designing annotation schemes, prompting models, validating outputs, and interpreting results. The workshop will also address responsible data practices, including data privacy, de-identification, and Sandpiper’s automatic de-identification of uploaded discourse data.
Participants will use Sandpiper to annotate sample discourse data, experiment with different coding approaches, and reflect on how AI-assisted analysis could support their own research or practice. By the end of the workshop, participants will understand the basic workflow for AI-assisted discourse annotation, including construct definition, rubric design, de-identification, model-based coding, human review, and quality checks. They will leave with practical experience using Sandpiper and a clearer sense of both the opportunities and limitations of using AI to analyze educational discourse at scale.
Workshop 2: Sunday 29 Nov, 10am – 1pm
A/Professor Trish McCluskey (Deakin University)
Beyond the Prompt: Building Humanity, Trust and Connection Through Play
We have spent the last few years immersed in conversations about AI tools, prompts, productivity, policy and disruption in higher education. These conversations matter. But they are not the whole story.
Alongside the urgent work of understanding what AI can do, sits a deeper and perhaps more important question: what does meaningful human connection look like in an increasingly AI-mediated world?
This workshop makes space for that question. It will be an interactive, playful, and deeply human exploration of what AI is revealing about trust, connection, identity, care, creativity, leadership and designing learning experiences in higher education. In this workshop, we will move beyond the technology to explore what actually matters in higher education: human connection and trust in an increasingly digital world.
Through low-tech, experiential provocations and fun, collaborative activities, participants will engage in focused reflection and dialogue on AI’s impact on teaching and learning and on authentic human relationships.
Expect laughter, vulnerability, deep conversations, and practical takeaways as we investigate how to design learning experiences that prioritise creativity and genuine connection, while using AI as a supportive partner rather than a replacement.
By the end of the session, you’ll leave with renewed energy, fresh strategies for human-centred practice, and new connections with like-minded colleagues. Perfect for educators, learning designers, and leaders seeking balance in the AI era.
Workshop 3: Sunday 29 Nov, 1.30pm – 4.30pm
Professor Mollie Dollinger (Curtin University), A/Professor Negin Mirriahi (Adelaide University) and A/Professor Tim Fawns (Monash University)
What Is Good Enough? Co-Designing Practical Approaches to Assurance for Online Learning
The higher education sector is home to two key debates at the moment: how to assure learning in the age of GenAI, and how to expand and improve equity student success in the context of the Universities Accord. The place where these two debates intersect, and indeed flare up, is online learning.
In this session we aim to unpack the hot topic of online learning by first being honest about the context that many of our online providers and educators inhabit at the moment. They are under immense pressure to assure learning, yet without the resources, capacity and, at times, the expertise needed to do it well. This not only reduces assurance to mere assessment security, it also raises barriers to redesigning courses and programs around the relational-rich pedagogies on which good assurance so often depends on. What does this mean in practice? It means the question is not simply how we assure learning online, which many educators could answer in an ideal world with unlimited resources and time, but rather, what is good enough? That is, what do higher education institutions need to do to ensure both public and employer trust in our sector and the value of the qualifications our future graduates will hold?
Through co-design with participants, this workshop will unpack the various approaches that foster assurance of learning that providers and/or educators can adopt despite limited capacity and resources that upholds quality in the sector and encourages educators to innovate beyond it.
We will then pressure test the approaches against a series of vignette online courses, deliberately varied in scale, discipline, and resourcing, to see where they hold,, where they break, and where they would quietly shut out the very students the Accord is trying to reach. Together, this is the hard work of protecting online education and ensuring all students, regardless of background, have access to high-quality education that the public and employers’ trust and respect.
Workshop 4: Sunday 29 Nov, 1.30pm – 4.30pm
Dr Maren Deepwell
WiAL / WiPL workshop (invitation code needed to register)