This presentation addresses the 2026 EdTech conference theme by centering the lived experiences of the "who" in our digital learning ecosystems: the students. Supported by generous funding from the national N-TUTORR project, this Masters research is based on a mixed-methods study of 282 survey respondents and 15 interviewees across four Irish Technological Universities. Ultimately, this presentation explores how students interact with Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and advocates for a human-centric, ethical approach to its integration.

Part 1: Key Findings on Student GenAI Usage The study reveals a pragmatic approach to GenAI among students, with the majority reporting moderate to high familiarity with the technology. The primary motivations for using GenAI are to save time and increase efficiency (63.8%), and to better understand complex coursework (49.6%). Despite narratives of widespread uncritical adoption, students currently use GenAI predominantly for auxiliary tasks like study assistance, grammar refinement, and brainstorming, rather than direct content generation. However, students harbour profound concerns about the technology; 76.6% worry about content accuracy and "hallucinations," while substantial majorities fear that GenAI may perpetuate societal biases and diminish independent critical thinking.

Part 2: Ethical Guidance, Academic Integrity, and GenAI as a Tool. Academic integrity remains a highly emotive issue, with 77% of students agreeing that GenAI increases academic dishonesty and makes it easier to submit unoriginal work. However, students are deeply frustrated by the "grey area" of current institutional responses and the unreliability of AI detection software, which frequently causes false flagging and distrust. To ensure academic integrity, institutions must stop viewing GenAI solely as a threat and instead provide explicit, structured guidance to help students use it ethically as an "assist tool". By moving away from blanket bans and focusing on transparency—such as requiring students to document their GenAI use and prompt engineering—educators can guide learners to harness GenAI to legitimately enhance and support their academic work.

Part 3: The Psychological Perspective: GenAI, Motivation, and Self-Efficacy. From a psychological perspective, GenAI intersects deeply with student motivation and learning approaches. The study found a strong correlation between motivational profiles and GenAI adoption: "strategic" and "surface" learners readily utilise GenAI to manage academic demands and time constraints, whereas intrinsically motivated "deep learners" are significantly more hesitant to use it. Beyond study habits, GenAI has a profound psychological impact by boosting student confidence, reducing academic anxiety, and acting as a scaffold for self-regulated learning. It serves as a powerful accessibility tool—functioning as an "ADHD assistant" for neurodivergent students, helping non-native speakers overcome language barriers, and providing a judgment-free space for shy students to ask questions.

Part 4: Recommendations for the EdTech Community To responsibly integrate GenAI and prepare students for an AI-permeated future, this presentation concludes with four student-informed recommendations:

1. Redesign Assessments for Authentic Learning: Shift away from traditional essays susceptible to AI generation and move towards process-oriented assignments, in-class research, and oral defences (Vivas) that measure genuine understanding.

2. Cultivate AI Literacy and Critical Thinking: Implement mandatory onboarding modules that explicitly teach students how to fact-check AI outputs, craft precise prompts, and evaluate algorithmic bias.

3. Shift from Detection to Trust-Based Verification: Abandon unreliable AI detection tools in favour of transparent assignment portals where students document their human-AI collaboration and demonstrate their critical thinking processes.

4. Co-Create Clear Policies: Develop flexible, module-specific guidelines in partnership with students, transforming the educational culture from one of suspicion to one of collaborative, ethical engagement.

As GenAI becomes increasingly embedded in higher education, a central question is who retains epistemic agency. This paper reports on the human-centred design of an undergraduate module in Database Technologies. Drawing on human-centred AI principles (Shneiderman, 2020) and Students-as-Partners scholarship (Cook-Sather et al., 2014), it argues that ethical AI integration requires deliberate epistemic friction. Rather than treating AI simply as a tool for efficiency, the pedagogical approach framed it as a contestable cognitive partner, emphasising students’ capacity to question, constrain, and override its outputs.

The study involved 62 students, 70% of whom reported no prior knowledge of the subject material. The module began with participatory design: students co-created and prioritised requirements for a fictional travel information system using in-class polling tools. The lecturer then demonstrated how to translate these requirements into a database schema through iterative dialogue with ChatGPT. In keeping with the concept of cognitive apprenticeship (Collins et al., 1989), expert reasoning was made explicit and chat dialogues were shared with students as artefacts of the process.

Subsequent tuition, alongside weekly lectures, incorporated online revision quizzes and a custom-designed chatbot featuring learning-from-errors diagnostic modules, query explanation, adaptive feedback, and formative MCQs. The end-of-semester test also used MCQ format; however, students were required to provide written rationales rather than simply select an answer, with additional marks awarded for correct explanations. This design operationalised the self-explanation effect (Chi et al., 1994) and ensured that correctness remained attached to reasoning.

To examine whether AI integration scaffolded or displaced independent competence, this study distinguished between AI-assisted and unassisted self-efficacy in the technical material, drawing on Bandura’s (1997) theory of agentic capability. This distinction extends technology acceptance frameworks (Venkatesh et al., 2003) by shifting attention from adoption and perceived usefulness toward epistemic calibration; that is, the learner’s capacity to judge when AI should be trusted, challenged, or overridden.

Survey data (n = 47) revealed a nuanced pattern. Students widely recognised the utility of AI. 85% agreed that AI tools increased their confidence in tackling the material, 89% reported meaningful learning benefits from the chatbot, and 85% felt comfortable trusting it despite awareness that it might produce incorrect outputs. However, indicators of independent competence were more differentiated. While 53% agreed they could write database queries without AI assistance, only 40% agreed they could independently troubleshoot errors. At the same time, 53% reported confidence in adjudicating disagreements between themselves and AI. Taken together, these findings suggest calibration rather than capitulation: students appear willing to use AI as a support tool while still regarding human judgement as the ultimate arbiter of correctness.

Behavioural data from the revision quizzes (n = 53) reinforce this interpretation. Students were permitted unlimited attempts, and performance improved markedly across attempts. In many cases, initial scores were very low, yet students frequently reached 85–100% after repeated attempts. These trajectories suggest engagement patterns more consistent with mastery-oriented revision than with one-shot answer extraction. If students were primarily using AI to generate answers directly, the expectation would be to see rapid convergence on correct responses with few attempts. Instead, the data show iterative cycles of error, feedback, and correction. This pattern aligns with the “learning from errors” pedagogy embedded in the chatbot and classroom approach, suggesting that AI functioned less as an answer engine and more as a diagnostic scaffold supporting repeated practice, thereby supporting the human-centred aim of maintaining students’ epistemic agency.

References

Bandura (1997). Self-efficacy. Freeman.

Chi (1994). Self-explanations improve understanding. Cogn Sci, 18(3).

Collins (1988). Cognitive apprenticeship. Thinking, 8(1).

Cook-Sather (2014). Engaging students as partners. Wiley.

Shneiderman (2020). Human-centered AI. Int J HCI, 36(6).

Venkatesh (2003). User acceptance of IT. MISQ, 27(3)..

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming educational environments, offering new possibilities for personalised learning, feedback generation, and administrative efficiency. Research highlights the potential of AI to support teachers’ workload, enhance learning analytics, and facilitate adaptive learning experiences (Kumari et al., 2025). At the same time, concerns remain regarding teacher preparedness, ethical use, data privacy, and the broader implications of AI for educational quality (Prilop et al., 2024). As schools increasingly experiment with AI tools, understanding how educators adopt and perceive AI is essential to inform implementation strategies and professional development initiatives.

Method

This study explores the adoption, perceived impact, and trust in AI among educators across Ireland. Data come from a quantitative online survey conducted between March and April 2025 with 201 primary and secondary educators in the Republic of Ireland (ROI, 60%) and Northern Ireland (NI, 40%). In the sample, 59% worked in primary schools and 41% in secondary schools. The survey examined AI usage frequency, perceptions of its impact on learning, and trust in AI technologies.

The study addressed 3 research questions:

RQ1: What are the current adoption trends in generative AI use among educators?

RQ2: How do educators perceive the impact of AI in education?

RQ3: What is the level of trust in AI technologies, and what are the primary concerns?

Results

RQ1.Current adoption trends in generative AI use

Educators were asked whether their use of different teaching technologies had increased over the previous 12 months. Generative AI showed the largest increase, with 74% reporting increased use. ChatGPT (52%) and Gemini / Google Classroom (44%) were the most widely used tools, indicating growing integration of conversational AI and AI-supported learning platforms into teaching practices.

Among teachers using AI with students, most did so regularly, typically once per week (66%). Primary teachers (74%) were more likely than secondary teachers (54%) to use AI regularly, suggesting adoption patterns differ across educational contexts.

RQ2.Educators’ perceptions of AI impact

Educators’ perceptions reveal a “positivity paradox.” While 72% agreed that AI use in classrooms should increase to support learning and 64% believed it will positively transform education, 57% also expressed concern that AI could decrease educational quality. These findings indicate that teachers recognise AI’s potential to support personalised feedback and learning, yet remain cautious about its broader pedagogical implications and long-term effects.

RQ3. Trust in AI and concerns

Most educators reported trusting AI “to some extent” (60%), with 25% fully trusting it and 11% not trusting it. Regarding reasons for lack of trust, data privacy was the most frequently cited issue (45%), particularly in primary schools (55% vs. 35% in secondary schools). Ethical considerations were also a concern (38%), including responsible use, student autonomy, and the development of critical thinking skills, and were more often reported in secondary education (43% vs. 34% in primary).

Conclusion

Generative AI is rapidly gaining traction in schools, with many educators integrating AI tools into their teaching. However, teachers’ perceptions reflect a balance between optimism and caution, highlighting benefits for personalised learning and efficiency alongside concerns about privacy, ethics, and educational quality. These results underscore the need for targeted professional development and institutional guidance to support the responsible and effective adoption of AI technologies in educational settings.

References

Kumari, D. A., Begum, D. S., Paunikar, M. S., Kaur, A. & Verma, D. S. (2025). The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Teacher Training: Enhancing Pedagogical Effectiveness. Journal of Marketing & Social Research, 2(5), 116-122.

Prilop, C. N., Mah, D.-K., Jacobsen, L. J., Hansen, R. R., Weber, K. E., & Hoya, F. (2024, December 19). Generative AI in teacher education: Using AI-enhanced methods to explore teacher educators’ perceptions. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/szcwb

From echoes of the ocean to portable homes, seashells hold great importance for (non)humans after their original creators have moved on (Scales 2015). Conversely, the afterlives of digital learning objects — like course shells found within the virtual learning environment (VLE) — have been routinely overlooked. While postdigital scholarship has extensively researched the design and facilitation of digital education, there remains a notable gap regarding the materiality of a course after it ends. This contribution argues that a course shell, which refers to the space for a single course within a VLE and the materials and activity contained within it, embarks on as messy and complex a journey as teachers and learners themselves after course end (Bissell et al. 2025).

Accordingly, this contribution maps the processes, policies, and actors surrounding a course shell’s afterlife through a qualitative analysis of 40 university policy documents and interviews with six VLE administrators. By ‘following the actors,’ it identifies three environments and seven stages through which course shells pass on their afterlife journeys (Adams & Thompson 2016). It discusses the intermediary actors that influence decisions related to course retention and how current practices intersect with students’ and teachers’ learning journeys. It finds that intermediary interests, which prioritize the collection and storage of student data over continuity and community, complicate efforts to innovate within these platforms (Weller 2020).

Drawing inspiration from hermit crabs (Scales 2015) and rusted robots (Okorafor 2025), this contribution explores possibilities to reimagine the afterlife of digital course shells beyond informatics engineering (Macgilchrist 2023). To view course shells as ‘miniature, mobile ecosystems’ may shed light on alternatives that support learning communities in developing belonging and nurturing their own educational narratives (Gravett & Ajjawi 2022; Han 2024). The study concludes that the material end of a course is a worthwhile starting place for reconceptualizing how we design and orchestrate digital learning experiences in the VLE.

References

Adams, C., & Thompson, T.L. (2016). Researching a Posthuman World: Interviews with Digital Objects. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Bissell, L., Lamb, J., & Overend, D. (2025). Postdigital Learning Journeys. Postdigital Science and Education 7, 327–335. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-025-00539-y.

Gravett, K., & Ajjawi, R. (2022). Belonging as Situated Practice. Studies in Higher Education, 47(7), 1386-1396. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.1894118.

Han, B.-C. (2024). The Crisis of Narration. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Macgilchrist, F., Allert, H., Cerratto Pargman, T. et al. (2023). Designing Postdigital Futures: Which Designs? Whose Futures?. Postdigital Science and Education 6, 13–24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00389-y

Okorafor, N. (2025). Death of the Author: A Novel. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Scales, H. (2015). Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells. Bloomsbury Sigma.

Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of Ed Tech. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press.

The adoption of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), in educational contexts presents several risks. While humans remain responsible for meaning-making in interactions with these systems, LLMs are not neutral technologies. Trained on vast datasets, LLMs reproduce and amplify imaginaries, narratives, values and biases embedded in their training data or instilled in fine-tuning processes (Bajohr 2024; Buttrick 2024). This inherent non-neutrality could potentially shape human perceptions, beliefs, and actions. Therefore, we argue that integrating LLMs into educational settings requires a critical perspective that goes beyond viewing them as neutral instruments to support teaching and learning processes. Educators and learners need to cultivate a critical awareness that leads them to question whose visions and imaginaries these models reproduce (Warr and Heath 2025). This requires developing competencies beyond effective prompting skills, such as proficiency in discourse analysis. In addition, educators and learners need to become aware of their own needs and visions for the future to strengthen their human agency over technology (Zuber and Gogoll 2024; Holmes and Miao 2023; Miao and Shiohira 2024). This can be facilitated by engaging learners and educators in activities that promote agency and subjectification processes, such as future workshops (Simon et al. 2025; Suoranta and Teräs 2023). To promote the integration of such activities and methods into educational practices and curricula, awareness must be raised of the inherent non-neutrality of LLMs and the narrative and imaginaries they reproduce, which may not align with the values and future visions of school stakeholders.

To illustrate the necessity of these methods, this contribution offers a comparative analysis of imaginaries generated by ChatGPT and visions articulated by teachers in two future workshops conducted in France. The analysis focused on technology- and education-related narratives and values. In particular, we analyzed which domains of educational purpose were emphasized (Biesta, 2015), as well as the presence of techno-solutionist narratives. Our findings reveal a striking divergence between the narratives and imaginaries produced by ChatGPT and the visions of the future articulated by teachers. We conclude by discussing implications for future-oriented educational practice.

References

Bajohr, H. (2024). Whoever controls language models controls politics. In I. Arms (Ed.). Training the archive (pp. 189–195). Walther König.

Biesta, G. (2015). What Is Education For? On Good Education, Teacher Judgement, and Educational Professionalism. European Journal of Education. 50 (1). 75–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12109.

Buttrick, N. (2024). Studying Large Language Models as Compression Algorithms for Human Culture. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 28 (3). 187–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2024.01.001.

Holmes, W., & Fengchun, M. (2023). Guidance for Generative AI in Education and Research. UNESCO Publishing.

Fengchun, M. & Shiohira, K. (2024). AI Competency Framework for Students. UNESCO Publishing.

Simon, S., Vassaux, C., Guigon, G., Čarapina, M., Consoli, T. (2025). The Postdigital Classroom: A Guide Toward the Imaginary. Postdigital science and education. 7(3). 916-938. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-025-00565-w.

Suoranta, J., & Teräs, M. (2023). Future workshops as postdigital research method. In Constructing postdigital research: Method and emancipation (pp. 317-331). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35411-3_16.

Warr, M., & Heath, M. K. (2025). Uncovering the hidden curriculum in generative AI: A reflective technology audit for teacher educators. Journal of Teacher Education, 76(3), 245-261. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224871251325073.

Zuber, N., & Gogoll, J. (2024). Vox populi, vox ChatGPT: large language models, education and democracy. Philosophies, 9(1), 13. https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9010013.

This presentation reports on our qualitative study of how higher education academic staff talk about their experience of online education. The study examines how three academic staff in an Irish University, who were engaged in online education in three distinct ways, discursively construct both themselves as actors in online educational spaces, along with how they constructed their efforts as desirable and worthwhile. A key motivation for this research was our concern that too much existing research fails to capture loses, in a real and tangible way, the way in which online education matters to those who create, teach, or administer modules and programmes. This study recognises that higher education academic staff are vibrant, dynamic beings and not variables that we can adjust in order to achieve a particular output, such as high quality online education. We used a discursive psychology analytic approach to examine the discourse and discursive practices of the three participants as they discussed their experiences with online education in semi-structured interviews. Our findings consist of two overarching participant discourses: Involvement in their work existentially matters to staff, and staff and their work exist in a reciprocal relationship with each other. We further divide these into five sub-discourses: their work gave staff a sense of purpose, their work reflected staffs’ senses of identity, staff coped with challenges that their work raised, staff confronted work realities by investing themselves, and staff navigated tensions between being the shepherds or originators of work concepts. We will conclude this presentation by discussing some implications of our findings, which have implications for how we can and should frame staff attitudes towards online education, and critiquing in particular the trend to fit staff into our theoretical notions of what online education practice should look like rather than view staff as dynamic beings. We will call on researchers and practitioners to be inspired by exemplary practitioners, rather than using them as tools that are useful to the extent they allow us to champion our educational interests.

Academic staff with a range of teaching, research and service responsibilities often find traditional professional development opportunities inaccessible (Datt, 2024). For some the logistics of attending workshops or short courses are not compatible with their role—particularly those with part-time appointments. For others, the scope of these pre-designed activities is not sufficiently calibrated to their context and its requirements, making such activities an inefficient use of often proscribed professional development time. Others still struggle to find academic developer colleagues whose knowledges and experiences are sufficient to provide support to those whose academic teaching involves clinical or vocational praxis. While some might argue this is a deficiency of academic development, in reality, the contexts in which many of us work in academic development limit our capacity to provide such support: there are too few of us and too many of them.

Though not a cure-all, heutagogy offers a framework that embraces such academic staff’s unique positionalities and can afford academic developers flexibility in the provision of support. Heutagogy’s focus on “learner-centered learning that sees the learner as the major agent in their own learning, which occurs as a result of personal experiences” (Hase and Kenyon , 2007, p. 112) shifts the role of academic developers from (solely) subject matter expert to more a facilitative mentor. Such mentorship relationships can be oriented to building and extending competence, with the academic developer acting as hub within a network of colleagues, whom can provision collegial peer support. As well, liberating academic developers from timetabled learning events can also increase their individual capacity. In particular, heutagogy—as self-determined learning—requires learners to drive the purpose, goal, content and process of professional development in the digital learning space.

In this presentation, I examine how infusing an heutagogic ethos into my academic development praxis has reinvigorated it—and changed how I led a bespoke team of academic developers. Heutagogy has enabled some to extend their competences who are unable to attend more traditional professional development opportunities, and has led to other subsequent changes in the academic development space at my university. Whether competences are acquired via institutional professional development opportunities (my way), wholly autonomously (your way), or some other (any) way is secondary to acquiring the competences—and the provisioning of support to do so. In the end, academic staff who engage substantively with professional development develop their own socially situated heutagogic practice. This should subsequently serve them well professionally, including those who wish to pursue postgraduate studies around digital learning.

Datt, A. K. (2024). Building capacity for teaching with technologies in higher education: The value of networking. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, The University of Auckland, New Zealand. https://hdl.handle.net/2292/70729

Hase, S., & Kenyon, C. (2007). Heutagogy: A child of complexity theory. Complicity: An international journal of complexity and education, 4(1): 111-118

Education is recognised as a fundamental human right (United Nations, 2006), and Ireland’s commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2018) requires inclusive higher education. However, structural, digital and environmental barriers continue to shape participation. While Ireland’s National Access Strategy promotes inclusion for students with intellectual disabilities (ID), barriers to meaningful engagement remain (Buckley & Quinlivan, 2023). Students increasingly seek inclusion within academic and vocational pathways (Grigal et al., 2021; Hennessy et al., 2024).

The expansion of third-level programmes for students with intellectual disabilities is recent, raising key questions for educational technology (EdTech). Beyond access, design must support participation, autonomy and progression. Project WAVE (Working Towards Academic and Vocational Equity), a HEA-funded PATH 4 Phase 2 initiative, addresses this through inclusive programme design where, first-year learning is cohort-based to build academic and digital competencies, with progression to co-learning and mainstream participation in second year.

This research focuses on the ICT module within this structure. It examines students with intellectual disabilities alongside the lecturer, postgraduate teaching assistant and instructional designer. A qualitative, practice-based design was adopted, grounded in reflective pedagogy and iterative development. Ethical approval was obtained, and accessible materials, including Easy Read information and consent forms, supported participation.

The module was delivered through Moodle using structured layouts, scaffolded e-tivities (Salmon, 2013) and guided discussions. UDL informed the design (AlRawi & AlKahtani, 2022), alongside graphic facilitation strategies (Cavaliero et al., 2024; Cavaliero & Gilligan, 2025). Domain-general strategies supported engagement (Dinsmore, 2017), reinforced through peer interaction, routine and exposure to mainstream practices (Grigal et al., 2021).

Findings highlight predictability, visual clarity, relational support and modelling of digital behaviours as central to participation, alongside communication, spatial navigation and belonging.

Inclusive EdTech is therefore not about technological novelty, but about designing systems that support belonging, participation and autonomy for an emerging and underserved student population in higher education.

References

AlRawi, J. M., & AlKahtani, M. A. (2022). Universal design for learning for educating students with intellectual disabilities: a systematic review. International Journal of Developmental Disabilities, 68(6), 800–808. https://doi.org/10.1080/20473869.2021.1900505

Buckley, L. A., & Quinlivan, S. (2023). Inclusive learning in Ireland: A case study. International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 23(1-2), 103-125. https://doi.org/10.1177/13582291231169397

Cavaliero, T., Gilligan, J., & McCabe, E. (2024). A rollercoaster of drawing and using digital tools!: Graphicking and grappling in a community of practice. Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 8(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.22554/npk13x26

Cavaliero, T., & Gilligan, J. (2025). How graphic facilitation methods support your practice. AHEAD Journal. Retrieved March 2, 2026, from https://www.ahead.ie/journal/How-Graphic-Facilitation-Methods-support-your-practice

Dinsmore, D. L. (2017). Strategic processing in education. In D. L. Dinsmore (Ed.), Strategic processing in education (pp. 3–20). Routledge.

Grigal, M., L. L. Dukes, & Z. Walker. (2021). Advancing access to higher education for students with intellectual disability in the United States. Disabilities 1, 438–449. https://doi.org/10.3390/ disabilities1040030.

Hennessy, T., J. McMahon, and O. Doody. (2024). How People with an intellectual disability experience inclusive third‐level education: A scoping review. British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 53, 158–191. https://doi.org/10.1111/bld.12626.

Salmon, G., (2013). E-tivities: The key to active online learning. New York: Routledge.

United Nations. (2006). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. United Nations.

United Nations. (2018). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Ireland ratification documents. United Nations.

As digital learning expands across education, questions of effectiveness need to be considered alongside questions of people, culture, and inclusion: who digital tools are designed for, whose knowledge they embed, and how they support meaningful participation in learning (UNESCO, 2023). These questions are especially important in the context of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs), where learners and teachers often work with limited resources, reduced exposure, and fewer opportunities for engaging, culturally grounded practice (Ward, 2015). In such contexts, educational technology is not simply a delivery mechanism, but a way of shaping access, motivation, and belonging.

This paper presents research on Cipher: Faoi Gheasa, a digital game-based language learning resource developed to support Irish learning in primary education (Xu, 2025). The work sits within a wider research programme on Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) for LCTLs and explores how game-based approaches can combine pedagogy, play, and cultural context in ways that are both educationally meaningful and adaptable. Rather than treating language as a decontextualised system of forms, the project positions it as something learned through interaction, story, and cultural connection.

Cipher uses narrative gameplay inspired by Irish mythology and folklore to create a learning environment in which vocabulary practice is embedded within puzzles, story progression, and feedback. In doing so, the design moves beyond a narrow “how-to-use-tech” framing and instead asks who the learning experience is for: young learners who may need motivating entry points into Irish; teachers who need flexible and usable classroom resources; and language communities seeking approaches that value linguistic and cultural sustainability. The project also reflects a broader human-centred and learner-centred perspective in EdTech design, foregrounding engagement, accessibility, and cultural relevance.

The paper reports on a classroom-based evaluation of the game in Irish primary school settings and considers its implications for digital language learning more broadly. The study indicates that game-based learning can support vocabulary development while also fostering positive learner engagement and a sense that the learning experience is both fun and meaningful. The findings suggest that culturally grounded digital games can offer a productive response to recurring challenges in Irish language education, particularly around motivation, resource limitations, and the need for enjoyable but pedagogically purposeful learning experiences.

Beyond the Irish context, the paper argues for a more plural understanding of EdTech in language education: one that recognises the importance of designing with and for specific communities rather than assuming that dominant-language solutions will transfer easily to lower-resourced settings. The Cipher framework is therefore discussed not only as a tool for Irish, but as an example of how adaptable, culturally informed digital design can contribute to more inclusive and sustainable futures for LCTL education.

By bringing together digital game-based learning, learner-centred design, and culturally resonant content, this paper contributes to ongoing conversations about equity, belonging, and participation in EdTech. It reflects not only what educational technologies can do, but who they serve, whose stories they carry, and how they might help widen participation in digital learning.

Reference:

UNESCO. (2023). Global Education Monitoring Report 2023: Technology in education: A tool on whose terms. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000385723

Ward, M. (2015). Factors in sustainable CALL. WorldCALL: Sustainability and computer-assisted language learning, 132-151.

Xu, L. (2025). Bridging computer-assisted language learning and cultural approaches: AI-powered game and VR solutions for less commonly taught languages (Doctoral dissertation).

As children’s digital lives become increasingly complex, there is a growing need to explore how cybersecurity education can be introduced in primary schools in ways that move beyond narrow technical instruction and engage with the ethical, behavioural and social dimensions of online security. While cybersecurity has not traditionally been foregrounded in primary education, building awareness and good habits as early as possible is increasingly important as children encounter networked technologies from a young age. In this context, cybersecurity education can support digital resilience, helping children participate in digital environments in informed, critical and responsible ways. The SECURE initiative (Strengthening Education for Cybersecurity: Uniting Resilience and Expertise), funded by the Research Ireland COALESCE Research Fund, responds by supporting teachers to adapt and enact cybersecurity education in developmentally appropriate and pedagogically meaningful ways.

This paper focuses on the teacher professional development dimension of SECURE and examines how a design-based approach can support teachers in embedding cybersecurity education across primary classrooms and the primary curriculum. The study is informed by design-based research and sociocultural perspectives on teacher learning, and is shaped by adaptive expertise and expansive learning. Professional development is understood as an iterative and situated process through which teachers develop knowledge through cycles of interpretation, design, enactment, feedback and refinement. Teachers are positioned as co-designers of learning who work collaboratively with peers, researchers, cybersecurity professionals and government agencies to create context-responsive units of learning. This is particularly important in cybersecurity, where teachers may be navigating emerging content and where effective practice requires technical, ethical and pedagogical considerations to be brought together.

The SECURE initiative promotes a holistic understanding of cybersecurity education and explores opportunities to teach about cybersecurity as a natural part of the primary curriculum rather than as an isolated topic. While codes, ciphers and encryption may provide accessible entry points, the project extends beyond purely technical content to include dimensions such as personal data protection, cyber hygiene, resilience, social engineering, misinformation, digital ethics, critical thinking and digital agency. Teachers draw on open-access resources as flexible stimuli for co-design, enabling them to shape learning experiences relevant to children’s everyday digital lives while remaining responsive to primary classroom realities.

The paper asks: How does participation in a design-based, community-supported professional learning process shape teachers’ confidence, pedagogical decision-making and enactment of cybersecurity education in primary school classrooms? To address this question, the paper foregrounds teacher-focused data generated across the initiative, including teacher surveys, teacher focus groups, observations of community of practice sessions, and teacher feedback on resources, classroom enactment and student engagement. Together, these data provide insight into how teachers make sense of cybersecurity as a curricular and pedagogical area, how they negotiate uncertainty in an emerging field, and how professional learning is mediated through collaborative cycles of design, dialogue and reflection.

Findings suggest that the design-based structure of SECURE creates productive conditions for teacher professional learning. First, it supports teachers in developing broader understandings of cybersecurity as a matter of online security, ethics, resilience and agency rather than simply technical knowledge. Second, the community of practice model enables teachers to test, adapt and refine learning in dialogue with peers and external partners, including cybersecurity professionals and government agencies. Third, structured opportunities for observation, feedback and reflection strengthen teacher agency by positioning teachers as active designers of digital learning.

This paper contributes to discussions in digital learning professional development by showing how a design-based model can support teachers to engage confidently with cybersecurity education in primary schools. It offers a practice-based account of how collaborative inquiry, pedagogical design and teacher agency can be brought together to build capacity for cybersecurity education in practice.

The COVID-19 lockdown (CLP) disrupted education, shifting learning online, a shift that was particularly challenging for rural schools in India. However, over the duration of the CLP, a range of digital technology-enabled teaching strategies (TETS) were introduced into schools. However, the sustainability of these strategies remains largely unexplored. Most global studies focus on technology use in higher education or specific teaching subjects; consequently, the sustainability of TETS in rural schools is largely unexplored. To address this gap, this qualitative case study examined the sustained use of TETS in a rural district of Maharashtra, India, after the CLP. Specifically, it explores technology use among teachers in upper primary grades (grades 5–8; 11-14 age group) and secondary grades (grades 9–10; 15-16 age group).

Research Question: In what ways did upper primary teachers (UPTs) and secondary teachers (SETs) continue to use digital technologies and TETS, and what barriers (external and internal) did they perceive in using TETS in the post-CLP

Method: A qualitative case study was employed. Case studies are valuable for examining how and why phenomena occur, especially in real-life contexts (Yin, 2009), enabling an in-depth, context-rich understanding of contemporary practices through multiple data sources. (Creswell, 2014; Patton, 2015). Semi-structured interviews with 35 UPT and 35 SET were conducted in October 2024 (post-CLP) and analysed using inductive thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-step method. Interview and class observation data were translated from Marathi to English, reviewed, coded, and thematically grouped using MAXQDA, ensuring anonymity and accuracy.

Based on interview findings, observations were subsequently conducted on the classroom practice of the four teachers, who reported substantial use of TETS, and on their availability during the visit of the researcher in their geographical cluster. Teachers consented and added the researcher to their classroom WhatsApp groups; only these were observed, including 2 UPT and 2 SET groups over 5 months. (November 2024 to March 2025). WhatsApp group data were analysed by retrieving chat history, organising it monthly, and categorising messages by sender, type, and frequency to identify interaction patterns. Data were analysed using a convergent design without manipulation; reflexivity, analytic distance, co-author discussions, and triangulation ensured transparency and credibility. (Miles et al., 2014; Saldaña, 2021).

Findings: In the Post-CLP, TETS was evident in teaching and learning. The most sustained technologies were WhatsApp, YouTube, and the government-initiated DIKSHA application, which provided resources for teachers, students, and parents. UPTs used WhatsApp mainly for parent communication and administrative document collection, while SETs used it for student interaction, sharing PDFs, and handling administrative tasks. In addition, teachers widely used the YouTube videos and DIKSHA application to access curriculum-based digital content that supplemented face-to-face classroom instruction.

Post-CLP, the government deployed digital whiteboards in schools, which SETs used to display diagrams and animations. Because the boards were predominantly installed in secondary classes, it is not surprising that UPTs used them less.

Both UPT and SET reported similar external barriers to TETS, including poor internet connectivity, limited school Wi-Fi, irregular electricity, and limited formal training in using advanced digital tools, such as digital boards. Internal barriers included fear of using digital technologies, concerns about students misusing smartphones, and lower interest among a few teachers nearing retirement.

Despite barriers, many teachers who were previously unfamiliar or uncomfortable with digital technologies reported increased confidence in independently learning and using new tools after CLP. Teachers felt that technology saved time, reduced workload, and improved students’ learning. Post-CLP digital technology use reflects TETS evolving from an emergency response into a core subject teaching tool. The state should ensure equitable access and strengthen teachers’ digital pedagogy skills.

This systematic literature review examines how digital technology influences student well-being and the implications for teacher professional development, following PRISMA 2020 guidelines to ensure rigour and transparency. Six databases, including ScienceDirect, ERIC, and Scopus, were searched using a PICOS framework focusing on students and educators, digital well-being interventions, and cognitive, social, emotional, and behavioural outcomes. From 474 initial records, 50 peer-reviewed empirical studies (2020–2025) met the inclusion criteria after multi-stage screening in Covidence, with an inter-rater reliability of κ = 0.76. Thematic synthesis identified both negative impacts, such as anxiety, sleep disruption, attention difficulties, and academic decline, and positive outcomes, including emotional coping, resilience-building, and informal learning. Effective school-based interventions ranged from curriculum-integrated programmes to mindfulness, screen-reduction initiatives, and culturally adapted approaches, yet implementation remains inconsistent. Major barriers include limited teacher training, weak measurement tools, policy fragmentation, and digital inequality. The review concludes that embedding digital well-being within sustained, evidence-informed teacher professional development is essential for equipping educators to address students’ evolving digital experiences and to implement whole-school digital well-being strategies.

This paper presents findings from the pre-piloting phase of the PAIDEIA Project, a European initiative designed to enhance teachers’ competencies for the responsible and effective integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education. The study engaged 12 teachers and educational experts who interacted with an initial curriculum developed using a spiral design and aligned with the DigCompEdu and UNESCO AI Competency Frameworks. Data were gathered through usability testing, structured feedback sessions, and task-based reflections to evaluate the curriculum’s clarity, relevance, and practical applicability. Results reveal high levels of participant engagement and interest, alongside considerable variation in baseline AI knowledge. These findings underscore the importance of scaffolded learning pathways, contextualised classroom examples, and explicit ethical guidance. Participants particularly valued hands-on activities, collaborative dialogue, and authentic classroom scenarios. At the same time, they identified areas for improvement, including clearer terminology, enhanced assessment checkpoints, and more comprehensive guidance materials. Insights from this pre-pilot phase informed targeted curriculum refinements, establishing an evidence-based foundation for subsequent large-scale piloting across European schools. The paper discusses implications for teacher professional development, AI literacy, and the ethical integration of AI within educational practice.

In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) has gained prominence as an effective pedagogical tool for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) (Zhu & Su, 2025). One form of VR simulation that is attracting increasing attention within ITE is that of VR classrooms (Li et al., 2024). Evidence suggests that VR classroom simulations afford Pre‑Service Teachers (PSTs) immersive and interactive learning experiences which enable them to practice teaching and develop greater assurance in their pedagogical capabilities, within the context of low-stakes experimentation (Gorman et al., 2025). A variety of approaches exists to enabling VR-simulated teaching experiences for PSTs, including the PST standing in front of a large digital screen while teaching, or wearing a head-mounted display (HMD) that cover the user’s full vision to create a more sensory immersive experience. However, in many cases, the PST remains in a stationary physical position while teaching within the virtual classroom, and often their hands are occupied with holding VR controllers or engaging with physical devices to mimic real-life actions within the virtual environment (e.g. pressing control buttons, picking up and/or moving classroom objects) which may have a limiting effect on the realism of the simulation when compared to real-life settings.

Situated within the context of an ongoing design-based research project to construct a Virtual Reality classroom for the purpose of cultivating inclusive teaching practices on the part of pre-service teachers, this paper reports on developments undertaken on the VR classroom to enhance the realism of the practice teaching experience. This includes walking and moving within a physical space to mirror movement within and around the VR classroom, and the implementation of a number of hand-tracking features to allow the PSTs to teach ‘hands free’ (without holding VR controllers). The piloting of these developments took place with a cohort of second-year concurrent ITE pre-service teachers. Following an initial group briefing, each PST engaged in teaching a short pre-assigned informal lesson within the VR classroom, and then took part in focus-group interviews to share their opinions of the VR experience. These interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed.

Findings indicate that pre‑service teachers experienced the VR classroom as highly immersive, citing natural walking, clear spatial orientation, intuitive hand-gesture controls, and realistic classroom layout. Interactive features such as object handling and in-app PowerPoint slide control augmented this sense of authentic teaching. However, limitations were also voiced, including non‑interactive animation‑like avatars and a shortage of typical classroom teaching resources. Suggested improvements included the need for more authentic and interactive avatars with a range of behaviours, a greater variety of classroom layouts, and additional manipulable teaching resources. Overall, participants described the VR classroom as a compelling and immersive simulation that supported authentic enactment of teaching behaviours, and recognised its potential as a valuable preparatory tool for pre-service teachers to enable experimentation, build confidence, and rehearse strategies to accommodate diverse learner needs.

References

Gorman, A., Tiernan, P., Donlon, E., & Boylan, P. (2025). Bridging the coursework-placement gap: implementing an AI-enabled VR environment to support student teachers’ experiential learning. European Journal of Teacher Education, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2025.2555482

Li, L., Hu, Y., Yang, X., Wu, M., Tao, P., Chen, M., & Yang, C. (2024). Enhancing pre-service teachers’ classroom management competency in a large class context: the role of fully immersive virtual reality. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), 1050. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03538-9

Zhu, Y., & Su, Y.-S. (2025). Virtual reality trends and challenges in teacher education: a systematic literature review. Interactive Learning Environments, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2025.2482585

What if blogging were understood not merely as an online publishing tool, but as a place on Earth?

For many of us in educational technology, blogging has long been framed as digital writing, content creation, or reflection within networked systems. Yet over time, it has become entangled with platform logics—metrics, visibility, virality, and algorithmic amplification—that distance it from lived experience and local community. This session proposes a different framing: blogging as a situated, embodied, place-based practice.

Drawing on the development of bava.studio—a physical storefront and cultural experiment in Trento, Italy—this talk explores what happens when a blog is grounded in a material location. Rather than operating as a transactional or attention-driven space, bava.studio functions as a site of encounter, curiosity, and conversation. Blog posts inform installations. Archives become objects. Digital reflections spill into street-facing windows. Events unfold without social media campaigns. The blog becomes less a content stream and more a locus of presence.

Through this experiment, I ask: What might educational technology look like if it were accountable to place? What happens when blogging is uncoupled from platform imperatives and reconnected to embodied community? How might we design digital practices that support local culture, sustained reflection, and meaningful encounter?

At a moment when educational technology prioritizes scale, efficiency, and automation, this session offers a provocation: perhaps blogging’s enduring power lies not in reach, but in rootedness. By reimagining blogging as place-making, we can rethink how digital practices foster connection, identity, and community in the real world.

Participants will leave with conceptual frameworks and practical inspiration for rethinking blogging—and educational technology more broadly—as practices grounded not only in networks, but in neighborhoods.

Description / Narrative

Over the past two decades working online, I have moved through higher education technology spaces—both digital and physical—while increasingly asking: What is lost when our digital practices are untethered from material context and place? And conversely, what might blogging become if grounded in the places where people are together?

That question became urgent after the COVID-19 pandemic and my relocation to Northern Italy, far from previous institutional roles and communities. The result was bava.studio—a storefront and physical outpost of a blog. It is not transactional, metric-driven, or designed to “go viral.” Instead, it is an experiment in wonder, conversation, and embodied community engagement.

In this session, I trace the evolution of that experiment—from blog reflections to shop-window dioramas, from unadvertised local events to treating a blog post as a physical object in space. Along the way, I explore the intentional choices behind these practices: what blogging as place asks us to reconsider about the people—the “Who?”—at the center of our edtech community; how uncoupling blogging from platform logic creates room for embodied dialogue and local presence; and what becomes possible when archives, media, artifacts, and conversation are treated as materials of a physical learning environment.

This talk is both reflection and provocation. What would it mean for educational technologies to support blogging that is situated, community-embedded, and place-sensitive rather than optimized for anonymity and virality?

Key Takeaways

Participants will leave with a framework for understanding blogging beyond the screen as a practice of place and public encounter; insights from a real-world initiative blending blogging with physical space and community-making; and questions to guide the reimagining of digital tools in service of real places and relationships.

Why This Matters for EdTech

Educational technology often privileges scale, interaction, and platform efficiency. Yet the material contexts of learning—the spaces where people gather around ideas and culture—are often overlooked. Reframing blogging as place-making expands what digital practice can contribute to learning, community, and identity in the real world.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) increasingly employ learning analytics (LA) - popularly defined as the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data about learners to understand and optimise learning environments. However, while LA promises benefits, its implementation often overlooks the perspectives and concerns of students, who are the primary data subjects. This doctoral research explored undergraduate student perceptions of LA during an educational intervention in which they participated and which focused on developing their critical data literacy (CDL). This qualitative case study highlights concerns from the students involved regarding agency, fairness, transparency, and trust within institutional data practices. Key concerns which arose included the status of students within LA as ‘data subjects’, not data owners or interpreters (Prinsloo, 2022). Students often lack awareness regarding the extent of data collection, its subsequent use, and the potential implications for their educational journey and future opportunities. This passive positioning limits their ability to critically engage with, question, or influence the LA systems that can monitor and potentially shape their learning experiences. LA, therefore, risk operating with insufficient consideration for student autonomy and critical consent, creating limitations related to understanding, control, and perceived equity. This qualitative case study suggests that developing CDL - an awareness and critical understanding of data collection, use, and potential misuse - is crucial for empowering students to navigate these increasingly datafied educational landscapes. This research employed a qualitative case study approach involving 18 undergraduate education students at DCU. Participants engaged in a short course intervention designed to foster CDL. A key component involved providing each student with a personalised report visualizing their own VLE activity data, conceptualised as a ‘reflective tool’ or “an object to think with” (Papert, 1980). This direct engagement with their own LA data was coupled with exploratory seminars discussing datafication, data ownership, agency, and criticality. Data regarding student experiences of the educational intervention and perceptions of LA limitations were gathered through semi-structured interviews and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Among the findings were revealed limitations of LA from the student viewpoint, primarily centered around themes of ‘Agency’ and ‘Fairness’. Within ‘Agency’, students expressed feelings associated with being passive ‘consumers’ of data processes and instances of 'digital resignation' - a sense of powerlessness regarding data collection - highlighting a fundamental limitation in student control and autonomy within LA ecosystems. While the intervention fostered increased ‘awareness’ and prompted ‘changes in practice’, these developments stemmed from an initial deficit in agency and understanding. The theme of ‘Fairness’ encapsulated multiple perceived limitations. Students began ‘questioning why’ certain data were collected and how they were used, probing the ethical dimensions of LA practices. A critical limitation identified was the lack of ‘data transparency’, with students expressing a desire for clearer communication regarding institutional data handling. This opacity contributed to feelings of ‘trust and distrust’ towards the institution's use of their data. Furthermore, students emphasised the need for more ‘human-centred’ approaches, suggesting an important role for their lecturer in interpreting LA data around engagement and prediction, as they have a pre-existing relationship with the learner and can provide vital personal context which data alone cannot. This research illuminates critical limitations inherent in non-human-centered LA implementations. From the perspectives of the students, these limitations prominently include a lack of personal agency and control, concerns about fairness and algorithmic bias, lack of data transparency leading to trust issues, and a general feeling of being subjects within opaque systems rather than empowered participants. The findings suggest that for LA to be truly effective and ethical, its design and deployment must move beyond technical optimisation to foster genuine student empowerment and privilege human interpretation of LA.

Learning designers play a pivotal role in supporting technological innovations in higher education institutions, and their work can inform policy and practice on a wide scale. They often act as the last line of defense between EdTech and learners—attempting to model pragmatic applications of EdTech while navigating broader pedagogical, social, technical, political, economic and cultural conditions within the postdigital landscape. However, their positionality in the Irish context is under-researched (Concannon et al., 2021).

Learning designers often exist in liminal spaces between academic and professional services in higher education, which can blur and undermine their status within the institution. This can be further compounded by the “disembodied skills-based constructions of learning designers” in job descriptions (Costello et. al., 2022, p. 460). Research and publication duties are most often related to the research of technology enhanced learning relevant to daily practice, not professional identity. Drawing on extensive experience as a critical EdTech practitioner, I embarked on my research journey as a part-time PhD student with cautious hope to amplify the voice and agency of learning designers, while endeavouring to create a generative model for postdigital learning design.

This paper outlines the journey so far, including lessons learned early in the PhD by publication route. It highlights plans for paper two, which explores the professional identity of learning designers within a corpus of Irish Learning Technology Association EdTech conference abstracts using critical discourse analysis. It is my hope to analyse the positionality of authors, revealing any presence of power imbalances in the literature and provide useful insights into representational gaps. The intention is to analyse what is being said, by whom, and how the rhetoric is shaping current discourse on the professional identity of learning designers. My PhD journey via publication in postdigital learning design has revealed how scholarly writing creates space to expand ideas, test emerging concepts, and develop critical perspectives. The publication journey has proved a vital site for networking and dissemination.

Concannon, F., Farrelly, T., Costello, E., & Welsh, S. (2021). Editorial: Ireland’s online learning call. Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 5(1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.22554/ijtel.v5i1.93

Costello, E., Welsh, S., Girme, P., Concannon, F., Farrelly, T., & Thompson, C. (2023). Who cares about learning design? Near future superheroes and villains of an educational ethics of care. Learning, Media and Technology, 48(3), 460–475. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2074452

Molloy, K., Costello, E., Brunton, J,. & Thomson, C. (2025). Critical and Creative Methods: From Learning Design Practice to Research. TechTrends, 69(6), 1134–1140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-025-01154-1

Digital wellbeing is broadly understood as the impact (positive and/or negative) of digital technologies on wellbeing (Calvo & Peters, 2018; Gui, Fasoli & Carradore, 2017; Biggins & Holley, 2020). This workshop is designed to offer participants an opportunity to reflect on their relationship with digital technologies and to explore strategies to minimise the negative impact and optimise the positive impact of these technologies. The workshop draws on the findings of a case study that explored the impact of a digital wellbeing intervention on the digital wellbeing of staff in an Irish higher education institution (Stone, 2023). The findings of this study demonstrate that the intervention, comprising 4 x 90-minute professional learning workshops, had a beneficial impact for participants on their overall workplace wellbeing and their ability to manage their digital wellbeing. Furthermore, the study suggests that the intervention broadened participants’ appreciation of digital technologies as tools for autonomy, connection, and productivity.

Workshop participants will be invited to engage with three activities from the digital wellbeing intervention which emerged from the study as most beneficial for participants.

(a) Group discussion activity: Following a brief introduction to the concept of digital wellbeing, participants will be invited to discuss the challenges they may have encountered in terms of using digital technologies in the workplace.

(b) Individual reflection activity: A model of digital wellbeing in the workplace will be introduced to scaffold an individual reflection on the positive and negative impact of digital technologies in the workplace and beyond.

(c) Presentation and collaborative activity: Participants will be introduced to evidence-based practical strategies to manage the challenges of digital technologies such as work-home boundaries, digital distraction and digital overload. Participants will be invited to share their own strategies.

In addition to offering the opportunity to reflect on their personal digital wellbeing, the workshop offers participants a flavour of the digital wellbeing intervention examined in the research study, which may be relevant to their own work context as learning technologists, educational developers and digital learning specialists. Open Educational Resources (OERs) developed for the digital wellbeing intervention will be shared with participants and are available through creative commons licensing should participants wish to adapt the professional learning intervention in their own context.

References

Biggins D. & Holley, D. (2020) Institutional compassion: a co-design approach to developing digital wellbeing. ALT summer summit, 29th September 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETcTbm7prQI (Accessed on October 30th, 2020).

Calvo R., Peters, D. & Ryan, R. M. (2018) ‘Designing for Motivation, Engagement and Wellbeing in Digital Experience’ Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 9 2018 Available at: DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00797

Gui, M., Fasoli, M. & Carradore, R. (2017) “Digital wellbeing”. Developing a New Theoretical Tool For Media Literacy Research. Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, 9(1), 155-173. doi: 10.14658/pupj-ijse-2017-1-8

Stone, S. (2023). The yin & yang of digital technologies: A case study exploring the impact of a digital wellbeing intervention on higher education staff (Doctor of Education thesis, Dublin City University). DORAS. https://doras.dcu.ie/28980/

That final stretch of a conference is a particular kind of moment. Your head is full, your notes are overflowing, and the ideas from two days of keynotes, hallway conversations, and serendipitous connections are buzzing. This is precisely the moment to do something with that momentum before it fades. This workshop invites EdTech 2026 delegates to join the Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL) Editorial Team and Guest Editors of the upcoming ILTA EdTech Special Issue for a structured, joyful, collaborative writing session, one where you will leave with a piece of writing in progress and a clearer sense of how to contribute to broader scholarly practitioner conversations.

This workshop aligns directly with the conference theme. The question of who gets to write, publish, and contribute to scholarly conversation is every bit as pressing as who gets to design or deploy technology. Academic publishing has its own access problem: it can feel gatekept, structured in ways that quietly favour those who already know the conventions and see themselves reflected in the literature. The IJTEL Book and Multimedia Review category exists precisely to lower that threshold, and doing that writing together, in community, with an editorial team in the room cheering you on, makes it even more so.

We said the workshop will be joyful, and we mean it. There is a growing body of research demonstrating that joy is not a luxury in the learning process but an essential condition for it (Camfield, 2025). Curtis et al. (2025) found that when learners are given freedom, community, and creative experiences, writing becomes not a high-stakes ordeal but a source of genuine meaning and confidence. Though their research focused on children, the insight transfers compellingly to adult scholars standing at the edge of a publishing landscape that can feel unwelcoming. Joy in learning is fundamentally relational, it emerges from working alongside others and from the satisfaction of producing something real together.

The conference's welcome to newer voices resonates deeply. Early-career researchers, practitioners who identify as writers-in-progress, and colleagues who have never submitted to a peer-reviewed journal before are not afterthoughts. Wallin (2021) argues that collaborative writing creates an "opportunity space" in which participants develop ownership of ideas and cultivate a genuine sense of belonging to a disciplinary community. Drawing on the "Writing Factory" model (Uckelmann & Pfeiffer, 2021) and structured writing sprints (Taylor & Thornton, 2017), the session guides participants through focused, time-boxed activities that reframe writing as an active, social process, one that creates momentum, reduces perfectionism, and produces meaningful peer-learning experiences along the way.

The workshop is structured around a specific IJTEL category - Book and Multimedia Reviews (1,000 words maximum, including abstract and references). If a workshop demo made you want to explore a platform further, or if a corridor conversation introduced you to a podcast, book, or resource that deserves wider attention, this is your invitation to take that encounter seriously and share it with readers. These reviews move beyond simple evaluation to explore how a resource contributes to our collective understanding of technology-enhanced learning, weaving together description, analysis, and reflection.

The 60-minute session will move through three phases. The first (15 minutes) is a structured reflective activity to help participants identify a conference resource worth reviewing, using a freewriting exercise (after Ruppo, 2025) organised around three questions: What surprised you? What do you want to read more about? Whose voice do you want to amplify? The second phase (30 minutes) is the writing sprint itself, where participants work independently or in teams to draft their review using a scaffold, with the editorial team circulating for real-time feedback and encouragement. Those with a different submission type in mind can use this time for dedicated 1:1 conversations with editorial team members. The third phase (15 minutes) closes with a brief share-out, an overview of the submission timeline, and a genuine celebration of the fact that a room full of EdTech practitioners showed up to write together.

This workshop is for everyone: early-career researchers seeking their first publication experience, seasoned scholars wanting a new venue, and practitioners who have never thought of themselves as "writers" but have plenty to say. Writing should be, is, and will be joyful.

Health professions students occupy a distinctive position in relation to generative AI (GAI): they encounter it as learners navigating its growing presence in higher education, and as future practitioners who will work alongside AI systems in clinical settings where errors carry significant consequences. Despite this, few structured opportunities exist for students to examine GAI critically – interrogating not just how to use GAI tools, but what assumptions they embed, whose interests they serve, and what harms they may cause (Bearman, 2025).

This presentation reports on the development of a critical AI literacy workshop currently being co-designed with undergraduate and postgraduate health professions students (Ambrosetti et al, 2025). Student involvement shapes both the content priorities and the pedagogical approach, ensuring the workshop addresses concerns that are relevant to learners at different stages of training.

The workshop engages participants directly with datasets and case studies to examine specific issues including algorithmic bias in clinical AI, the environmental costs of large language models, cognitive offloading and its implications for clinical reasoning, and the dynamics of human-chatbot interaction. Activities are designed in accordance with Universal Design for Learning principles to support both individual reflection and group discussion, with digital tools used to enable flexible modes of participation (Doyle et al, 2025).

Pre- and post-workshop surveys are being developed to capture shifts in participants' perspectives and self-reported literacy. Findings from the co-design process will be shared, along with practical implications for health professions education.

References

Ambrosetti, É., Gaudin, C., Flandin, S., & Poizat, G. (2025). Students as co-designers in health professional education: a scoping review. BMC Medical Education, 25(1), 645.

Bearman, M. (2025). Learning to Work With Artificial Intelligence as Part of Clinical Education. The Clinical Teacher, 22, e70260.

Doyle, A. J., O’Toole, M., Cassidy, D., & Condron, C. M. (2025). Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in simulation-based health professions education. Advances in Simulation, 10(1), 33.

This paper will present the MySkills platform, a unique digital platform launched by Dublin City University (DCU), which enables students to capture and evidence their transversal skills in a rigorous and tranparent way, helping them to identify, articulate and showcase their skills, while simultaneously helping employers to make more informed, evidence-based recuitment decisions. MySkills is integrated with DCU's learning management system and underpinned by a proprietary transversal skills framework that has been designed, developed and implemented over a five year period.

The MySkills platofrm not only captures the results of the formal assessment of students' transversal skills within their programme of study, it also recognises the value of extracurricular learning by allowing students to create and record experiences and then link these with the development of specific skills. Each skill in operationalised into component parts and has a universal four-level rubric to optimise for consistency and transparecny across the university. This in turn means that students' specific level of competence in any skill they choose to evidence is clearly shown, including whether or not the attached rating is DCU-verified or self-reported.

The paper will also explore the multiple internal and external stakeholders involved in their process and the importance of creating a culture of authentic collaboration in order to implement major innovations in teaching and learning within any higher education institution.

Many forces in higher education claim digital competence is a priority - policy frameworks, institutional strategies, educators and staff, employers, and students themselves. But they often don’t mean the same thing by it. Why it matters, who it matters to, who should develop it, and how seriously it should be treated differ depending on who you ask. The institutional infrastructure built to develop it has to hold all these competing purposes at once.

This paper reflects that tension from the inside. The LevUL Up Digital Skills Hub (DSH), established in 2023 and hosted on UL’s Brightspace VLE, supports the development of core digital skills and competencies, primarily of students. It is open to the UL community for self-directed exploration and is intentionally designed to be collaboratively embedded into academic curricula with educators. The self-assessment opportunities, self-study resources, and GenAI literacy activities it provides can be assessed as coursework. 3,750 people are currently enrolled in it, and it is embedded in 14 modules.

No institutional mechanism triggers embedding. Instead, each embed emerges through conversation, shaped by disciplinary context, module design, and individual advocacy. Those conversations surface something strategic documents rarely capture. Some module leads who embrace embedding do so for different reasons than those who comply. They see digital competence as intrinsic to their discipline and their graduates, while the others are directed to include it. Enthusiastic module leads want critically literate graduates; others are responding to employability pressures. The question “Who is this for?” receives different answers depending on who you ask - and those answers shape what gets built.

Students hold competing expectations too. Emerging findings from a HEA Pathfinder funded student co-design study on GenAI literacy and academic integrity (AI-LIT), grounded in Students as Partners principles (Ní Bheoláin, Lowney & O'Riordan, 2020), reveal that learners simultaneously want clear institutional guidance and direction alongside personal agency to chart their own path in this area. Their motivations span academic need, professional anxiety around future prospects, and genuine curiosity.

This paper offers a practitioner perspective on navigating these competing purposes and argues that spotlighting them is a precondition for digital competence provision that effectively serves students.

Attendees will take away an honest account of navigating these tensions and a question worth asking: before asking how to develop digital competence, might we first ask who it is for and why.

References

Ní Bheoláin, Ruth, Lowney, Rob, & O’Riordan, Fiona. (2020). Students as Partners in Assessment (SaPiA): A Literature Scoping Review. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4270579

As a provider of online blended programmes, we elicit regular feedback from students to understand more about their learning experiences and make improvements according to user-centred design principles. Feedback is collected in a variety of formats – such as focus groups, surveys and feedback forms – to inform regular reviews of programme content, and built-in feedback mechanisms and learning analytics are used to monitor students’ experience of the digital learning environment.

However, to date there has been little investigation of students’ experiences specifically within the LMS, resulting in a gap in institutional knowledge regarding how students are interacting with LMS affordances. Of particular interest to us for this project was how students use resources and perform tasks in the LMS and the relative importance of these in helping to achieve their academic goals. We felt that obtaining insights into what students value in our current LMS would not only assist us in improving the current learning environment and aligning it more effectively with students’ needs; it would also enable us to make informed decisions as to future LMS design and select new systems as needed.

To this end, we collated a very short survey to collect information on what tasks and resources students rely on most in the LMS in order to achieve their aims. Adopting an approach informed by the Top Tasks method, a tried and tested user-centred study design chosen for its simplicity and practicality, the survey simply asked students to select five of their top LMS tasks and/or resources from a list. The task list was collated via a series of stakeholder conversations across departments and programmes to ensure a wide perspective on LMS affordances and uses. This presentation discusses findings of the first iteration of this survey and reflects on lessons learned that will assist us in repeating the survey with future cohorts. Insights will be shared regarding the utility of the Top Tasks approach for user-centred design projects in digital learning environments.

In Ireland, Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based violence is a vast and prominent topic that the government is trying to eliminate and diminish as it is significant social issue that affects anyone no matter their gender, social status or community. In response Ireland has developed a solid government support system as well as a strong non-governmental organisation sector. Although, there is a pathway of support for those affected by such violence, there is an evident lack of support for those who provide it.

This was the starting point of our project. We worked with potential students as partners to develop an effective online micro-credential that would inform and help support practitioners with their everyday threat of facing vicarious trauma and burnout, as well as equipping them with useful tools to create their own self-care plans to further minimise the risks of a trauma occurring. This would be a new approach to developing a module as we are directly working with feedback from the targeted student pool.

The project has four stages: Development, Testing, Feedback and Amendments. Firstly, based on peer-reviewed literature and the three National Strategies a trial micro-credential was developed. Then it was tested by DSGBV organisations’ practitioners to test and go through all the content as well as the digital pedagogies such as videos, reflections, quizzes and self-plans. We used a mixed method approach to fully utilise the feedback given by the practitioners. This consisted of an online questionnaire asking them about the content, navigation, design and usefulness of the micro-credential. Afterwards, volunteers were asked to join a one-on-one interview to further discuss the positives and negatives of the micro-credential. The last step is reviewing and applying the feedback from the practitioners to make sure that the micro-credential is fit for them.

By the end of the process, the micro-credential, called Certificate in Managing Vicarious Trauma and Self-care for DSGBV frontline workers, will be offered to practitioners through Dundalk Institute of Technology as part of our suite of micro-credentials. This will follow the Dundalk's Institute of Technology micro-credential policy where the objective is to provide a quality assurance framework for validation and certification of micro-credentials, units of learning that attract less than 10 ECTS credits (DkIT, 2024). Additionally, it will broaden the reach of the RiVeR Project at Dundalk Institute of Technology as their aim is to provide available opportunities for education and training to cohorts that are most in need of further support and education in the area of DSGBV. Building on their successful programme 'Certificate in the Fundamentals of Understanding and Responding to Domestic Abuse' which has been running since 2016 and was the first accredited education programme of its kind in Ireland.

Digital and pedagogical innovation in higher education increasingly depends on professionals whose work sits outside traditional academic leadership structures. Third Space teaching and learning professionals, including instructional designers, learning technologists, and academic or educational developers, play a pivotal role in shaping learning, teaching, and digital transformation, yet are often required to lead change without formal authority. This creates an ongoing misalignment between how leadership is institutionally recognised and how it is enacted in practice.

Using Whitchurch’s (2013) concept of the Third Space as a theoretical lens, leadership in teaching and learning roles is examined as work often characterised by ambiguity, lack of recognition, and reliance on informal influence. While Third Space positioning enables collaboration and innovation across academic, technical, and professional boundaries, it also requires individuals to navigate complex organisational dynamics, actively construct leadership identity, and make their contributions visible within institutional cultures.

Advance HE’s Aurora Women’s Leadership Programme is used as an illustrative case to examine how structured leadership development can support leadership practice in Third Space teaching and learning roles. Aurora’s emphasis on leadership identity, influence, reflective practice, and adaptive leadership is analysed in relation to the realities of Third Space work. This analysis is situated within a wider ecosystem of leadership development and professional recognition facilitated by sector bodies and networks such as Advance HE, SEDA, ALT, and EDEN, which support leadership development through a range of formal programmes, professional frameworks, and communities of practice.

Leadership development for Third Space teaching and learning professionals is most effective when it reflects how leadership is enacted in practice: relationally, incrementally, and across organisational boundaries. Engagement with structured leadership programmes and professional networks is explored as a way of strengthening leadership identity, enhancing influence, and supporting sustainable pedagogical and organisational change in higher education.

References

Gately, L. (2024). Inhabiting the “Third Space” in Higher Education: A case study on how educational technologists navigate this space in an Irish university. Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.22554/ijtel.v8i1.156

Grant, J., & Kennie, T. (2024). The characteristics and career pathways of third-space research professionals in universities: Reflections from practice. Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI). https://www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/The-characteristics-and-career-pathways-of-third-space-research-professionals.-Reflections-from-practice.pdf

Thorpe, C., & Partridge, H. (2024). The Third Space in Higher Education: A scoping review. Higher Education Policy. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-024-00374-z

Whitchurch, C. (2013). Reconstructing identities in higher education: The rise of “Third Space” professionals. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203098301

Whitchurch, C., and Heaky, G. (2024). The concept of third space as an enabler in complex higher education environments. London Review of Education, 22 (1) 42. https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.22.1.42

Aurora | Advance HE

The use of digital technologies to support or enhance teaching and learning in formal education (“edtech”) has come to mediate or facilitate almost every educational process - from the delivery of teaching to the management of assessment and feedback to facilitating operational issues and providing analytics.

Edetch is, however, first and foremost a business. The global market for edtech products is forecast to reach $370 billion by 2026 (Statista, 2022). The variance however between edtech and other digital industries, the inviolability of edtech, may not be as clear as is often presented. Features of more exploitative digital industries such as “surveillance dividend”, the surveillance capitalism model of extracting data, as identified by Zubof (2019), Killer Acquisitions" (Cunningham, Ederer, & Ma, 2021), Data driven acquisitions (De Cornière & Taylor, 2024) and Doctorow’s concept of enshittification (Doctorow, 2025) are just some of the more disreputable practices within the edtech industry. The presence and push by Artificial Intelligence (AI) companies and research organisations into education systems represents a further blurring between the bearing of edtech companies and silicon valley entities.

This paper will examine some of the elements surrounding and impinging on some of the darker spaces in the edtech landscape. These include regulations and policy which are often slow to, or unable to, grapple with edtech vendors; the solutionism inherent in the peddling of edtech tools, as identified by Teräs et al. (2020) and Boninger, Molnar and Saldaña (2020); and the phenomena of repurposing unpopular or unprofitable technology as a teaching and learning tool to sell to education authorities. The paper will also examine the role of higher education persons and entities in acquiescing or adopting to these infractions and which elements of formal education structures make them susceptible to these incursions.

This reflective presentation outlines the experiences of two academic developers as we embarked on our first research project augmented by the use of Microsoft Copilot.

Gen AI has become ubiquitous among both staff and students in Higher Education. As academic developers we are aware of both the concerns and positive possibilities that this new technology brings. Like many colleagues, we have both used Gen AI tools in an informal manner to support the creation of workshops, resources, instructional artefacts etc. And when we started planning this small research project, whose main focus was to determine strategies to support the meaningful embedding of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles within webinars offered by our team, we discussed the appropriateness of using a Gen AI tool to support the process. This discussion led to a mindful decision to ‘lean-in’ to Copilot and use it to support our research in an intentional and documented manner.

This presentation will outline the structure we placed around our intended use of Gen AI and the reasons for selection of Copilot; it will also outline the positives and negatives of Copilot use in this specific research project and consider what takeaways we will bring to future research. Specifically, we will consider the role of Gen AI tools in similar research projects in terms of inclusive design and accessibility.

We will also discuss our post-research perspective on the ethical and psychosocial implications of Gen AI use in educational research. We all know how carefully we consider the attributes of potential research collaborators: should Gen AI be treated any differently when making these considerations?

As educators we must consider all aspects of a student’s learning journey in Higher Education to ensure that students feel informed and confident. In my role as Head of Department I recognised that some students struggled with some aspects of the transition into Higher Education, including understanding the terminology and new processes they encounter. Students gain entry to our programmes as first year students following their Leaving Certificate or equivalent, as advanced entry students from Further Education, as mature learners and also as an international student, and each of these pathways presents different needs for information. Through structured engagement with students, it became clear to me that students often experienced some challenges outside their discipline learning and were unaware of where to seek further information. This can lead to a negative impact on the student experience. I embarked on a project to improve the accessibility of communications and information to students working with students as partners on the project to improve the wider student experience. Guided by the principles of Universal Design Learning we sought to creatively use a variety of media creatively to support students. A small group of students were active participants in the co-design and co-creation of resources for students ensuring that the student voice was central to the overall design of the project. This paper will evaluate two phases of the creation of a new inclusive Department Hub, demonstrating how working in partnership with students supported the development of resources to aid the student learning experience and transition to higher education. The project is guided by the 'Steps to Partnership' framework to ensure that student engagement in the project was meaningfu and focused closely on students as co-creators. The examination of the benefits of the partnership was two-fold and this research will consider the benefits of working with students on a project for students as well as the benefits to the students involved. I will explore how the students were empowered and how the voice of the student was important to the overall outcomes of the project.

As generative AI reshapes how students produce work, questions about what counts as authentic inclusive assessment have become more urgent. If AI can draft essays, generate code, and simulate expertise, how do HEIs design assessments that genuinely prepare students for professional life? In response to this question, the eLearning Development Services Unit (EDSU), in collaboration with the MTU Director of Student Services, began examining authentic assessment practices across the Kerry campus in December 2025. A call was issued to staff on the Kerry Campus of MTU to showcase real examples of authentic assessment experienced by teaching staff . Early indications suggest that AI and digital technologies are not replacing the pedagogical foundations of authentic assessment but are instead strengthening and expanding the ways in which those foundations can be enacted across diverse higher‑education contexts.

The initiative generated a range of technology-enhanced assessment examples, including problem and scenario-based tasks as well as inquiry-based approaches grounded in real-world professional contexts. To move beyond simply collecting examples, we developed a working categorisation framework to analyse the submissions. Assessments were considered in terms of whether they were:

• Genuinely authentic and technologically aligned

• Designed with authentic intent but supported by superficial use of technology

• Technology-heavy but lacking authentic learning design

• AI-aware or AI-avoidant in their structure

This categorisation allowed us to examine how pedagogy, technology, and GenAI awareness were interacting in practice, rather than treating technology use as inherently innovative. This work is situated within a growing body of research examining the relationship between authentic assessment and digital technologies. Hu, Liu and Daniel’s (2025) systematic review of digital technologies in authentic assessment identifies how contemporary higher education is increasingly turning to AI‑enabled and data‑driven tools to support assessment practices that reflect real‑world tasks. Their findings reinforce and extend the earlier framework proposed by Villarroel et al. (2018), who argued that authentic assessment requires alignment between learning outcomes, real‑life professional demands and assessment design. Simulations, Inquiry-Based and Problem-Based Learning, oral exams and portfolios emerge as examples. While Villarroel and colleagues provided a conceptual blueprint for constructing authentic assessments that promote meaningful learning, Hu et al. demonstrate how digital technologies can operationalise this blueprint at scale. Examples of these include adaptive platforms, analytics dashboards and simulation environments. This suggests an evolution in practice in which authentic assessment is no longer only a pedagogical ideal but increasingly a technologically supported practice.

This session will present examples gathered through the campus initiative, reflect on patterns emerging from staff practice, and examine how technology, pedagogy and GenAI awareness intersect in the design of authentic assessment. It will offer a practice-informed framework for distinguishing between meaningful integration of technology and superficial innovation in assessment design.

Active learning offers many benefits for students, including developing higher order thinking skills and promoting engagement (Prince, 2004). Increasingly, students want ‘value add’ learning experiences, moving them from passive to active learners and where they have opportunities for collaboration and peer learning (Flynn, et al., 2023). However, active learning possibilities can be highly dependent on the classroom environment in which they occur. Traditionally, institutions have invested in developing fixed lecture-style teaching spaces with a high student-teacher ratio. Consequently, active learning can be difficult to achieve in such environments. Cognisant of the potential of active learning, and of strategic aims to move towards innovative pedagogies and to develop students’ skills such as problem-solving and collaboration, DCU colleagues embarked on a collaborative endeavour to develop new digitally-enabled active learning spaces. Partnering with colleagues in the IT department, estates, audiovisual suppliers, the centre for teaching and learning, and with the endorsement of senior leadership, a suite of new active learning spaces were developed in 2025. Informed by the challenges faced by lecturers in traditional teaching spaces, and through semi-structured conversations with multiple stakeholders, these new active learning spaces were developed as flexible, multipurpose environments in which a variety of innovative pedagogies could be facilitated. With no fixed lectern, lecturers are forced to become guides on the sides rather than sages on the stage. The spaces included multiple mounted displays as well as mobile interactive displays, a green screen maker space area for students, an immersive learning suite, hybrid and video conferencing facilities, and more. This presentation will share the journey of how this partnership collective embarked on this initiative, and the value of taking such a partnership approach. It will share the challenges encountered, and how they were overcome, and advice for others who want to transform their classrooms into student-centred environments to enable better outcomes.

Flynn, S. et al. (2023). ‘“Vibrant, open and accessible”: Students’ visions of higher education futures’. In Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures. Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0363.14

Prince, M. (2004). ‘Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research’. Journal of Engineering Education. 93(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2004.tb00809.x

As higher education institutions continue to expand their digital learning ecosystems, students and staff are often required to navigate multiple platforms, tools and access points as part of the learning experience. While these technologies can offer valuable flexibility and functionality, they can also create fragmentation, inconsistency and unnecessary complexity for learners. This was a key consideration in University College Dublin’s move to Brightspace. The transition was not simply a platform migration, but an opportunity to rethink how digital learning is experienced across the institution. UCD set out to create a more consistent, connected and student-centred learning environment by bringing key learning tools, resources and activities into one central platform. This session will explore the practical considerations involved in delivering change across a large institution, including stakeholder engagement, staff support, communication, and the importance of designing with the student experience in mind. Attendees will gain insight into how a platform transition can be used as a catalyst for wider digital learning improvement, rather than being treated as a technical implementation alone. By sharing UCD’s approach, challenges and lessons learned, this session will offer practical reflections for institutions seeking to simplify their digital learning environments, improve consistency, and create more connected learning experiences for students and staff.

This paper outlines examines how podcasting, combined with structured safe/brave space facilitation and democratic principles of teaching and learning can empower students to address generative issues (family, childhood, institutional power) in higher education. Drawing on Dewey's creative democracy, where knowledge emerges through non-hierarchical, iterative inquiry (Dewey 1939/2021), Felt’s (2009) ideas around epistemic spaces of learning and Arao & Clemens’ (2013) brave space framework, the paper outlines two university courses that treated students as co-inquirers rather than knowledge recipients in the development of their podcast assignments.

The Literature of Family (final-year undergraduate BA Arts, SETU Waterford, Ireland) explored literature's representation of diverse family structures through readings that highlighted underrepresented voices (Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey (1993) and Unsettled by Rosaleen McDonagh (2021)) and N-TUTORR-funded staff-student curriculum redesign. Media and Childhood (Early Childhood Education, Greece) investigated institutional management of children's agency via a children's podcast production. Both courses explicitly rejected reproductive pedagogy, seeking instead to surface and negotiate power imbalances around topics such as race, disability, sexuality, and generational roles through shared readings, brave space seminars, and podcast assessment.

In Ireland, an online session with Dr Andrea Bramberger, co-editor of Reconceptualizing Safe Spaces: Supporting Inclusive Education (2021), introduced safe and brave space principles that students practised in seminars, then applied in group podcasts (20-40 mins), replacing essays. All completed SETU podcasting badges to prepare for this assessment. In Greece, students collaboratively defined safe spaces through children's podcast creation, negotiating technical and ethical challenges. The podcasts and reflections that resulted offered interesting findings in relation to the value of podcasting in creating safe spaces and offering marginalised voices a place from which to speak.

In Ireland, podcasting functioned as an epistemic living space (Felt 2009; O’Connor and O’Connor 2025), making situated, messy knowledges audible. Student prejudices were revealed in interesting moments of discussion, while the voice of a student with complex disabilities was centred in one submission, veering off the topic a little to consider issues of structural ableism and barriers to accessibility. In Greece, reflections highlighted the shift in thinking that occurred through podcasting, moving students from an emphasis on child protection to child empowerment. They also noted the power of music and song to operate as a shared, inclusive language.

The project demonstrated the ways in which podcasting serves as a space for generative and democratic knowledge creation. What was most central in both countries was the way in which podcasting enabled the development of the learner; it was not the technical achievement of producing the podcast itself that was most valued. Therefore, the project provides a transferable model for courses in which students can become democratically competent inquirers (Lake 2017).

For more than 25 years, Irish HEI’s have been fundamental in developing and operating initiatives and programmes to support students in Higher Education from underrepresented and socio-economic disadvantaged groups. One such initiative at the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), Ireland, was the establishment of the Certificate in Transition to Higher Education programme in 2017. Co-developed between the TUS Flexible Learning Dept. and the Access Service, this programme is a foundation preparation course providing a pathway for students to acquire the skills and competencies required to successfully participate on a degree programme. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory and grounded in principles of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), the programme recognises that the move to higher education can be accompanied by feelings of fear, and overwhelm, particularly for students returning to education or entering from non-traditional backgrounds. This practitioner paper examines the development of a digital initiative through a collaborative partnership between TUS staff and students. This initiative is designed to mitigate feelings of apprehension and to equip prospective students with the confidence to navigate the challenges associated with the transition to higher education.

In 2022, a funding fellowship was secured to develop a suite of digital resources through the National Technological University Transformation for Recovery and Resilience national programme (NTUTORR). Through a process of engagement and dialogue, student and staff partners identified the need for digital pre-arrival supports to enhance students’ sense of belonging and preparedness. Featuring the shared lived experiences of students of the Transitions programme, the fellowship allowed for the development of a suite of peer-led short audio-visual resources that offer practical advice and encouragement to prospective students. Feedback indicates that such resources have the potential to significantly ease concerns about academic capability as well as reduce feelings of isolation. By embedding partnership in digital resource development, this initiative demonstrates how co-creation can advance inclusive practice and strengthen student engagement at critical decision points as they consider the transition to higher education. In recognition of its outstanding commitment to inclusive, innovative and transforming learning initiatives, the Certificate in Transition to Higher Education won the AONTAS STAR Award 2025 in the Third-level Access and Engagement category.

‘Learning Beyond Lectures: The EdTech Talks’ is a student-led podcast series in which final year students from the BSc. in Digital Business and Innovation (DBI) undergraduate degree in Dublin City University Business School research, produce and host a podcast series as part of two final year modules. This podcast series has been specifically designed to enhance student engagement, develop transversal skills and foster integration with industry. Students have autonomy over their own learning efforts and understandings within the podcast series as they take ownership over researching, preparing and producing each episode of the series. They engage deeply with industry to create and record each episode of their podcast series and create a sharable, modern resource that highlights emerging trends and challenges in management, technology and education. Each episode is showcased on Youtube, Audioboom and LinkedIn (once approval has been granted by the industry representative) providing both student and industry a voice in important technology based, industry driven and educationally focused conversations.

Although podcasting has existed in education for a number of years, they have typically been implemented as an academic-led activity (McGarr, 2009) intended to support acquisition learning (Laurillard, 2012). Student-led podcasts, whereby students work in small groups to actively research, prepare and produce podcast episodes to discuss salient topics with various industry representatives are far less common in third level education. In this way, student-led podcasts can transform traditional learning, by providing students with an innovative and unique platform to explore and discuss important topics in an authentic and engaging way. The development of this student-led podcast series as a pedagogy (pod-agogy) is an innovative and exciting platform for students to demonstrate a number of key skills that align with industry practice in a way that speaks the student language. This form of teaching and learning is assessable, engaging and reflective. It afford learners multple means of engagement, allowing students to showcase their knowledge through different means whilst providing opportunities to listen back and reflect on their work, actively shaping disciplinary conversations in education by enabling knowledge exchange and modern engagement between student, industry and the wider community.

The University of Bradford has long prided itself on being a collegiate institution at the forefront of leveraging technology to support and enhance learning. This makes its technology partnerships more crucial than ever, and this session highlights the journey of learning transformation with one of its core partners. Dr Nelson will overview the ongoing journey of transformation through video lecture capture, student engagement and highlighting on the importance of professional and practical skills assessment to prepare Bradford students for the working world.

There is a multitude of eLearning authoring & daily admin tools available. Each has its edge, the particular style of instructional design or administration it's been orientated towards. Some integrate with other systems, some don't, some are designed to be part of a suite of tools, some are independent and can be troublesome to mix with other applications.
If you wish to create scenario based learning, gamification or social/collaboration based learning amongst the numerous other eLearning projects formats potentially needed, finding one application to cover all formats becomes tremendously difficult. But as project goals change, what’s the combination of applications that might be needed to cover the necessary ground?

An ever-evolving application combination approach could be the only method to stay producing the best possible end projects. But this approach can be immensely time consuming even before approaching the project content itself, products are always launching, updating and then sunsetting. And as an added bonus AI was introduced to a multitude of tools in slightly different ways, each trying to add additional functionality and reduce the input needed in the project but often with unknown effects or potential downsides.

With over a decade of eLearning industry experience to draw upon Colin will lead this session to get the ball rolling towards support in this changing landscape, by looking at the currently most used eLearning content development tools, the AI aspects added to them and the agentic AI applications breaking into the market. But also blending analytical analysis and administration tools amongst others into a solid development process to help eLearning developers, administration and most importantly the end user through the end product.
This session will take the complexity out of eLearning creation by covering applications strengths, weaknesses, which combinations blend best together and gaps that might exist between applications. To see which combination can work best together to cover a multitude of different eLearning project types.

The global surge of short form media across social media accounts such as TikTok and Instagram reels is shown to attract increased engagement within higher education student cohorts with embedded algorithms continuously stimulating personal interest (Yang et al., 2025). Concurrently, one Irish university study revealed students share devices for both entertainment and online learning engagement purposes (Stone and Lowney, 2022). However, recent Irish higher education insight highlights a current resistance regarding self-regulated motivation and engagement towards blended learning activities (Kitching, 2024). Interestingly, such findings emerge in recent years in Europe, identifying significant mobile device distractions were identified impacting blended episodes, within the surge of digital distractors (Aivaz and Teodorescu, 2022). Similarly, developing discourse of short form media argues that short form entertainment poses compulsive distraction effects toward attentional engagement in learning (Yang et al., 2025). This prompts further investigation into students transitions into differing digital activities from the same screen, and how this can impact student experiences within online learning, with insights surrounding attentional engagement and learning effectiveness.

This paper will share a student study from a qualitative case study of undergraduate students within DCU surrounding multi-purpose of screens, short form media influence, and insight of a consensus of fellow student short form consumption towards the blended student engagement. The aim of this paper is to propose student centred feedback to identify a specified relationship between short form content with blended learning is to propose learning opportunities towards learning design in a new era of digital content engagement.

The Kemmy Business School Digital HUB at the University of Limerick is an award winning multimedia facility designed to support academic faculty in creating engaging, interactive and accessible multimedia resources for their courses.

The facility won the UL President's Staff Excellence Award in 2022 and has recently been nominated as a finalist for the National Awards in 2026.

The Digital HUB offers a range of video and web resources and adopts a unique support models in which academics visiting the HUB work alongside an experienced multimedia designer and are supported throughout the whole process of creating their digital resources along the way. The facility has been in continuous operation for over 3 years and has completed over 400 projects and counting.

The session is going to focus on sharing reflective insights into workflows, processes and staffing as well as examples of good practice and popular educational multimedia products on offer (video lectures, Podcast etc.) which will be particularily useful for instructional designers, learning technologists or IT professionals wishing to replicate the model and attempt to build or modify their existing multimedia facilities in order to scale video production at their own institution.

Europe faces persistent challenges in achieving digital-skills targets and addressing gender imbalance across ICT fields. Informatics education remains uneven in curriculum quality, pedagogy, and assessment practices. THINKER proposes a transformative, pan-European model that supports authentic, gender-inclusive, and evidence-based approaches to teaching and assessing informatics in upper-primary and lower-secondary education.

This presentation immerses participants in the THINKER pedagogical framework, which integrates authentic learning, computational thinking, inquiry-based design, TPACK, and gender-inclusive teaching principles. Participants will explore practical examples drawn from project activities across more than 100 schools and early teacher-training pathways.

This presentation is ideal for teachers, initial teacher-education providers, curriculum designers, digital-skills programme leads, researchers, and policymakers.

Population cancer screening involves complex decisions about who should be screened, which tests should be used, and how limited resources should be allocated. These decisions require balancing potential benefits with possible harms, including false positives, false negatives, and unnecessary follow-up investigations. Supporting students to understand these trade-offs can be challenging in traditional teaching contexts, where screening concepts are often introduced theoretically and students have limited opportunities to explore how different decisions influence outcomes.

This practitioner presentation describes the development of an interactive digital simulation designed to place students in the role of decision-makers responsible for designing a screening strategy for a hypothetical population. During an online teaching session, students interact with the simulation by selecting key parameters, including the screening test, available funding for screening, and eligibility criteria such as age, sex, and selected risk factors.

Based on these choices, the simulation generates a report summarising outcomes across both screened and unscreened populations. The report includes estimates of true positives, false positives, false negatives, and true negatives. Students then use this report as the basis for a summative assignment in which they analyse the outcomes of their screening strategy and reflect on the implications of their decisions.

By allowing students to experiment with different screening scenarios and observe how their choices influence outcomes, the simulation supports exploratory learning and encourages critical reflection on the complexities involved in designing population screening programmes. The presentation will outline the design of the simulation, its integration into teaching and assessment, and reflections on its use in supporting student engagement with screening decisions.

Teaching coding to students who are not computer scientists presents a persistent challenge: before learners can write their first line of code, they must navigate software installation, environment configuration, and dependency management. These technical barriers disproportionately exclude students with limited computing resources or technical confidence, raising a question central to EdTech 2026: who are we designing coding education for, and who is being left behind? Recent advances in open-source technologies offer transformative opportunities to address this gap.

This paper reviews the evolving landscape of technologies for delivering interactive coding tutorials, drawing on several years of experience teaching R and Python to social science students at Dublin City University. We trace a trajectory from server-dependent to fully serverless solutions, evaluating each approach in terms of accessibility, scalability, maintenance burden, and pedagogical effectiveness.

We begin with cloud-hosted environments that provide full IDE experiences without local installation, such as Google Colab, Posit Cloud, and GitHub Codespaces. While powerful, these solutions depend on institutional licences, user authentication, or cloud compute resources that may be constrained or unavailable.

We then examine container-based approaches, particularly MyBinder, which packages a GitHub repository into a live, reproducible computing environment accessible via a single URL. This approach, used in the DCU R Tutorials and DCU Python Tutorials projects, eliminates installation barriers entirely but relies on shared server infrastructure with limited scalability and cold-start delays.

The primary focus of this paper is the emerging generation of fully serverless solutions powered by WebAssembly. Using the Quarto Live framework, educators can embed interactive, editable code cells for both R (via webR) and Python (via Pyodide) directly into static HTML documents. These tutorials require no server, no authentication, and no installation: they run entirely in the learner's browser and can be freely hosted on platforms such as GitHub Pages. We discuss the pedagogical affordances of Quarto Live, including built-in exercise scaffolding, grading algorithms, and reactive outputs, and reflect on practical trade-offs such as package availability and initial load times.

We conclude by arguing that serverless interactive tutorials represent a significant step toward more equitable and inclusive coding education, lowering barriers not only for learners but also for the educators who create and share these resources.

This presentation explores the design, development, and user testing of Tóraíocht; and immersive narrative video game created to support Irish language acquisition among primary school pupils (ages 9–12) in Gaelscoileanna. Developed within a Celtic-futurist aesthetic inspired by Irish mythology, this pilot project game delivers a story-driven adventure experience entirely through Gaeilge na Mumhan.

This presentation investigates how narrative immersion, player agency, and environmental storytelling can reinforce dialect-specific language learning. Rather than relying on decontextualised vocabulary drills, the game embeds Gaeilge na Mumhan* organically within character dialogue, quest mechanics, and interactive problem-solving. Players must interpret linguistic cues, engage in branching conversations, and make decisions that require meaningful comprehension and production of Irish.

The presentation will outline the pedagogical framework informing the design, drawing on principles from game-based learning and communicative language teaching. It will detail how dialectal features of Gaeilge na Mumhan were integrated into scriptwriting, voice performance, and world-building to ensure linguistic authenticity. Particular attention will be given to age-appropriate user experience design, balancing cognitive challenge with accessibility and narrative engagement.

The project demonstrates how culturally grounded immersive game design can contribute to Irish language engagement by positioning Irish not only as a subject of study, but as a fun and exciting adventure.
*Gaeilge na Mumhan is the Irish dialect of the Munster region, in the south of Ireland.

Short-form content, in particular emotionally charged “Doomscrolling”, has emerged as a significant challenge to digital wellbeing, particularly among higher education students driven by personalised algorithms and the fear of missing out.

Recent research in digital pedagogy and HCI has noted that self-curated social media feeds, continuous news cycles, and progressive swiping contribute to cognitive overload, stress, anxiety and shorter attention spans, reducing the capacity for deep learning. This negatively impacts students’ productivity and engagement in educational contexts, due to continuous scrolling being intentionally designed to sustain attention through infinite content feeds (Alter, 2017).

Key studies relating to social media’s impact on academic performance highlight student-reported findings on daily screen time and its effects on assignment completion. Platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram have been identified as significant digital distractions that alter the attentional process of students by activating dopamine-based reward circuits and encouraging compulsive checking behaviours (Hormes et al., 2014).

This talk will outline emerging research on scrolling, attention, and digital pedagogy while outlining practical strategies for educators and learning designers to support student wellbeing and sustained cognitive engagement in Edtech learning contexts.

This Gasta presentation will share the collaborative journey of a design team from five higher education institutions as they develop an Open Course, offering participants an opportunity to explore immersive learning and the innovative use of Extended Reality (XR) technologies—Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR)—within education and professional training. The course is designed for learners who wish to understand and select immersive technologies and combines practical skills with critical, research‑informed perspectives on immersive technology in teaching, learning, and assessment.

The design team brings together complementary expertise in technology-enhanced learning, Extended Reality (XR) pedagogy, instructional design, and online facilitation, underpinned by a strong commitment to research-informed practice and open education. The design process was informed by the well-known Carpe Diem curriculum development methodology (Salmon & Wright, 2014) with a commitment from the design team to openness and practice-sharing, leading to the inclusion of immersive technologies within a variety of educational contexts. This presentation will include insights on both the collaborative design process itself and the output, which will be an Open Badge.

Salmon, G., & Wright, P. (2014). Transforming future teaching through ‘Carpe Diem’learning design. Education sciences, 4(1), 52-63.

This talk looks at the Galway-Mayo VLE as part of the REAL analytics project. There are approximately 26 million student interaction events with the VLE annually but what does this mean?

The Gasta provides a high-level overview of how our VLE is being used across our programmes, what level of interaction is typical for a student and what the high-level drivers of interaction and engagement are. We find that there are several different user types but that activity highly concentrated within a small number of courses. 21% of student activity is concentrated in the top 1% of courses and just 8% of courses drive over half of activity on the VLE. What drives this and what features support it?

The aim is to provide a clear, accessible snapshot of our VLE usage and consider how we might best support educators developing their own pedagogy. The Gasta acknowledges the limits of learning analytics and aggregated activity indicators, emphasising responsible interpretation and the importance of pairing data with local context.

The Gasta finishes by considering how a university’s strategic vision for its VLE can impact pedagogy and what educators might need from the University to drive improved pedagogy, student engagement and retention.

In this lightning talk, Dr Maeve O’Dwyer will analyse the concept of ‘third space’ (Whitchurch, 2008; 2012) within the Irish Higher Education context. Staff engaged in teaching and learning and/or research which is non-disciplinary, extra-curricular and/or staff-focused in nature can be identified as third space professionals. But to what extent is ‘third space’ a useful concept in articulating roles and identities for instructional technologists or learning designers? Does it break down silos between ‘academic’ and ‘non-academic’ work, or deepen the divide?

This short talk will cover:

• What is meant by ‘third space’ in Higher Education
• Highlights from existing literature (mostly focused on UK, US, Australia and New Zealand), relevant to instructional technologists and other 'third space' roles
• Preliminary findings from research into Irish HEIs.

Drawing on ongoing research on the impact of third space professionals in the Irish Higher Education context, this short talk will introduce, challenge, and provoke thought as to what extent ‘third space’ can empower us to better articulate our roles and identities at an increasingly challenging time across the Higher Education sector.

Friedman (2025) argues that humanity has entered the Polycene, an epoch defined not by any single crisis but by the sheer unpredictability of simultaneous, accelerating change. If this is the world our students will inhabit, then higher education has a non-negotiable obligation: to design learning experiences that prepare students to adapt, not merely to reproduce what they have been taught.

This provocation makes a deliberately uncomfortable claim: we cannot credibly assert that students understand a concept or practice unless we have evidence that they can apply it in more than one novel context. If we only ever assess learners in the tidy, predictable settings in which they were taught, we are not measuring understanding; we are measuring rehearsal. To assess students' capacity to perform coherently across varying contexts, we must present contexts that demand responsiveness. Varying context is not adding noise; it is creating the conditions under which the signal of adaptive expertise can emerge.

Drawing on Kapur's (2025) Productive Failure research and Juarrero's (2023) account of context-dependent constraints, I argue that uncertainty is not a risk to be managed out of our curricula; it is an architectural constraint to be designed in. In the Polycene, adaptation is the highest measure of intelligence.

This Gasta presentation introduces an emerging project on scholarly podcast creation in Irish higher education. The focus is on academics who design and produce podcasts as part of their teaching, research, and public engagement activities. The Gasta will briefly outline the rationale for treating podcasting as a scholarly practice in its own right, and will sketch initial questions about how episodes are planned, scripted, recorded, and disseminated. In particular, it asks whether there is an identifiable ground-up methodology for scholarly podcast creation in Ireland, or whether current practice is largely ad hoc and individually driven.

The presentation will act as a call for collaboration, inviting colleagues who are already podcasting - or who are interested in beginning - to contribute to a collaborative inquiry into process, pedagogy, and impact. Participants will be invited to share their workflows, tools, and institutional contexts, with a view to co-developing a mapped overview of current practice and, ultimately, a flexible methodological framework for scholarly podcast production that can inform future teaching, research, and recognition of podcasting as academic work.