ASCILITE NEWS

ASCILITE 2026 Conference Update – It’s getting closer!

With the ASCILITE 2026 program taking shape, it’s time to start making your plans for Brisbane!

Early-bird registration closes on 5 October, so if you’re joining us in November, now is a great time to get your registration and travel arrangements underway.

We have secured a special conference accommodation rate at Rydges South Bank, our conference venue. Rooms at the conference rate are selling fast, so we encourage you to book soon if you’d like the convenience of staying right where all the action is https://2026conference.ascilite.org/venue-details/accommodation/

For everyone who submitted to ASCILITE 2026, all submission outcomes will have been released by today. If you haven’t seen yours, please log in to APUBS and check your inbox/submission status directly, rather than relying solely on the email notification.

A huge thank you to our Submissions Team, led by Thom Cochrane and Vickel Narayan, and to the many members of the ASCILITE community who contributed as reviewers. With a record number of submissions this year, this has been an enormous undertaking, and we are very grateful for the time, care and expertise you have contributed to shaping the ASCILITE 2026 program.

With submissions now finalised, our Programs Team begins the rather challenging task of bringing everything together into the conference schedule. With a record number of submissions and a very full program, there are quite a few pieces to fit into the puzzle! We expect to publish the draft conference program within the next week, so keep an eye on the conference website.

Welcome BoodleBox – our new Silver+ Sponsor

We’re delighted to welcome BoodleBox as a new sponsor of ASCILITE 2026 – and our very first Silver+ Sponsor!

BoodleBox is a collaborative AI workspace designed for education and the future of work, bringing multiple leading AI models together in one secure environment and supporting educators and students to develop the skills and judgement needed to work effectively with AI. With a strong presence in higher education internationally, BoodleBox is now making its way into the Australian market, and we’re excited that ASCILITE 2026 will be part of that journey.

As our Silver+ Sponsor, BoodleBox will also be bringing a little extra fun to our Gala Dinner, sponsoring the conference photobooth – so make sure you gather your colleagues, grab a prop or two and capture some memories from Brisbane!

A very warm welcome to BoodleBox, and thank you for supporting the ASCILITE community and helping us make ASCILITE 2026 a conference to remember.

Our sponsors play an important role in making the ASCILITE Conference possible, and we’re very grateful for their ongoing support of our community. When you register, we encourage you to opt in to receive information from our conference sponsors. It’s a great way to hear about the tools, services and initiatives they’re bringing to the higher education sector, while supporting the organisations that help make our conference possible.

2026 ASCILITE Awards – Who deserves to be recognised?

Nominations are extended and now close midnight Sunday 20 September 2026.

Do you know someone doing outstanding work in digital learning and teaching? A colleague whose contribution deserves greater recognition? A team doing something genuinely innovative? Or perhaps it’s time to put forward your own work?
The ASCILITE Awards are our opportunity to recognise and celebrate the people, teams, research and ideas making a difference across our community. We’d love to see more of that great work represented in this year’s nominations.
There are opportunities across a wide range of contributions and career stages:

• Innovation Award – recognising exemplary, research-informed innovation in the use of technologies for tertiary learning and teaching. The outstanding nomination also receives the Allan Christie ASCILITE Innovation Award.
• Anthology Educational Designer of the Year Award, in memory of Allan Christie – recognising a professional staff member who has made a significant contribution to learning and teaching, with a $1,000 award sponsored by Anthology.
• Emerging Scholar Award – recognising an emerging scholar making a noteworthy contribution to research or practice in technologies for learning and teaching.
• Community Fellow Award – celebrating ASCILITE members who excel at building connections within ASCILITE and the wider community.
• ASCILITE/CAULLT Award for Outstanding Leadership in Digital Learning in Higher Education – recognising innovative and effective leadership in the use of digital technologies to enhance higher education.
• ASCILITE Research Grants – three grants of $5,000 each for an Early Career Researcher, General Academic and Professional Staff Member.
• Student Bursary Award – supporting full-time PhD, EdD or equivalent students.
• Life Member Award – ASCILITE’s prestigious recognition of significant service and/or sustained contribution to the Society.

Don’t assume someone else will nominate them! If a colleague, collaborator or team came to mind as you read this, take a few minutes to look at the criteria – or send this announcement their way and encourage them to apply.
And if you’ve been wondering whether your own work is worthy of recognition, consider this your nudge to put it forward.

Nominations now close midnight Sunday 20 September 2026.

Full award criteria, eligibility requirements and nomination forms are available on the ASCILITE Awards website.

Michael Cowling, Elaine Huber, & Karine Cosgrove
ASCILITE Awards

LAST CHANCE to nominate for the ASCILITE Executive 2026 elections

Current ASCILITE financial members are invited to stand for election to the ASCILITE Executive Committee.

The positions being elected this year are Treasurer and 4 members of the executive.

You will find details of current Executive Members here and a summary of Executive roles and the work of the Executive is outlined in the document Prospective Executive Committee Member Information.

For further information on the work of the Society or the Executive Committee please contact the President, Vice-President or any Executive Committee member. Committee members will be happy to answer your questions by phone or email.

The closing date for nominations is 15 September 2026. 

Voting will be open to all financial members from 17 September to 15 October 2026.

Results of this ballot will be announced at the ASCILITE Annual General Meeting at ASCILITE 2026 in Brisbane.

PLEASE NOTE:  Election campaigning is limited to word-of-mouth only. Mass emails, posters, and social media posts by candidates or proxies are not permitted.

Nominate online here.

ASCILITE Secretariat and Election Returning Officer

TELedvisors Network September webinar: Making the third space a great space

Date: Wednesday 30 September
Time: 4:00pm AWST | 6:00pm AEST | 9:00pm NZDT

What is needed to better support third space practitioners in higher education to develop careers and extend relationships?

Join us for this special international edition of the TELedvisors monthly webinar, bringing together our colleagues and friends from Australia and the UK in a panel discussion considering how we can collectively increase

•     Recognition and accreditation of third space work
•     Organisational structures and representation
•     Employment security
•     Psychological safety
•     Opportunities to grow as a third space practitioner

Invited panelists include:

• Dan Laurence (Victoria University)/Meredith Hinze (The University of Melbourne)
• Kelly Vere  (University of Nottingham)/Charlotte Verney (University of Bristol)
• Representative from (Australian) National Tertiary Education Union
• Dustin Hosseini (University of Cumbria, University of Glasgow)
• Colin Simpson (Deakin University)
• Hosted by Elizabeth Black (Deakin University)

This is intended to be an engaging discussion drawing on the views of the third space practitioner community, so we will also create an online space facilitating structured reflections on challenges and possible solutions in the two weeks leading up to this webinar.

Register here

Colin Simpson, Wendy Taleo, Penny Wheeler, & Antony Tibbs
TELedvisors SIG Leads

OTHER NEWS

From grassroots to momentum: building local Education-Focused communities

Some of the most useful communities in higher education begin from the ground up, when colleagues find one another, share practice and create opportunities to collaborate. On Wednesday 30 September, the Australian Teaching and Education Focused Academic Network (TEFA) will host a conversation with Karin Watson (UNSW), Karena Waller (University of Melbourne), Mary Wright and Eszter Kalman (University of Sydney), drawing on their experiences of building and sustaining grassroots education focused communities.

The discussion will consider how communities get started, how they maintain momentum, and what helps them move from informal networks towards greater recognition and institutional support.

The 45-minute panel will be followed by a 30-minute community conversation so participants can share experiences from their own institutions and make new connections.

Wednesday 30 September, 12.00–1.15pm AEST | Online

Register here.

CRADLE Seminar Series : Beyond grades: Reimagining how student – achievement is recognised in higher education

Date: Wednesday 14 October 2026
Time: 2.30 pm to 4.00 pm (AEDT)
Where: Deakin Downtown (Level 12, Tower 2, 727 Collins Street, Melbourne) or online
Cost: This is a free event
More information and registration here

This year’s CRADLE International Symposium, ‘Beyond grades: Reimagining how student achievement is recognised in higher education’, seeks to pave the way for innovative approaches to showcasing what students have learned. As a pivotal highlight of the Symposium program, we are pleased to invite you to an interactive public panel event.

The panel will discuss how the future of higher education might look if the sector was to rethink grading. If we were to reassemble how student achievement is institutionally represented, what might grades – or whatever emerges after them – look like? Numerical and letter grades have been critiqued for a long time, not least because they provide one-dimensional and ‘flat’ representations of what students can do. Yet despite widely reported criticism, grading systems persist in most higher education contexts. What kinds of novel theories, concepts and ideas could help us move beyond grades towards more meaningful ways of recognising student learning?

Facilitated by CRADLE’s Dr Juuso Nieminen, the panel discussion features three eminent higher education researchers: CRADLE’s Professor David Boud, the University of British Columbia’s Professor Rola Ajjawi, and Deakin University’s Associate Professor Lauren Hansen. The panel will reflect on what the future of grading might look like in higher education, with each panellist offering a provocation on reimagined grades:

• ‘The absence of grades can be normal: A personal reflection’ – Prof. David Boud
• ‘Rethinking student achievement and the work of grades’ – Prof. Rola Ajjawi
• ‘Beyond selection: Grades and employability in higher education’ – A/Prof. Lauren Hansen

Please join us in person at Deakin Downtown or online, at the special time of 2.30 pm, for this thought-provoking panel discussion to close CRADLE’s 2026 International Symposium.
Panellists

• Professor David Boud, CRADLE, Deakin University
• Professor Rola Ajjawi, University of British Columbia
• Associate Professor Lauren Hansen, Deakin University

Invitation to Participate in a Study: Transforming online social learning – leveraging AI capabilities to enhance social interactions in online higher education

As part of an ongoing PhD project, we’re interviewing online educators and learning designers to explore how AI and social learning can support online learner experiences. We’re interested in the experiences of those involved in teaching, designing, and building online learning, and in understanding why they include, exclude, or reshape these aspects in courses.

If you self-identify as someone who teaches online courses or designs online courses as either a learning designer or academic developer who uses AI tools to support learning, we invite you to participate in a 30–40 minute online interview.

Please find more information and express your interest here.

This project has received ethics approval from AU HREC (4935). For further queries, please contact the principal investigator:

Wimu Thommadurage

Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (C3L)

Adelaide University

Email: wimukthi.thommadurage@adelaide.edu.au