CRADLE Seminar Series 2025 #5: Transforming feedback cultures
Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) - Deakin University
In this webinar, CRADLE’s Professor Margaret Bearman draws on a five-year, multi-phase qualitative project examining how feedback cultures shape feedback experiences in medical education. Focusing on surgical and intensive care training contexts, the session shares key findings, culture-specific feedback strategies, and practical insights on improving feedback in less-than-ideal circumstances.
The recorded webinar is now available.
2026 AI in Higher Education Symposium Australia & New Zealand – Resources
University of Sydney
In a recent symposium organised by the University of Syndey, educators from higher education institutions across Australia and New Zealand shared their creative and authentic uses of generative AI to improve teaching, learning, assessment and curriculum.
The recorded sessions can be watched on the symposium page.
The power of asynchronous learning
Centre for Online and Distance Education, University of London
Drawing on a debate as old as digital learning, this CODE webinar challenged the false “synchronous vs asynchronous” divide and explored what asynchronous learning can do well when designed intentionally. Speakers shared practical approaches for building structure, flexibility and meaningful interaction — from small, human moments of presence to programme-level consistency and sustainable facilitation.
The webinar can be watched on YouTube.
Learning playfully – how playful practice can support successful learning
Centre for Online and Distance Education, University of London
In CODE’s recent webinar, “Learning playfully – how playful practice can support successful learning,” presented by Professor Susannah Quinsee, the session brought together theoretical perspectives and practical techniques for embedding play within adult learning environments.
Professor Quinsee framed play broadly as thinking differently and disrupting routine, extending beyond games to include simple shifts in environment or activity. She distinguished play as open, flexible and voluntary, in contrast to games which are rule-bound and structured, and emphasised that playful learning works best when educators are clear about objectives, encourage learner agency, and build in moments for reflection.
Alongside this wider framing, the session highlighted practical approaches ranging from “serious play” — deliberately designed activities such as escape rooms, online Lego® Serious Play workshops and collaborative Minecraft tasks — to lighter interludes and icebreakers that re-energise participation and prompt curiosity.
Ruinous EdTech – higher education and computing's excesses
University of Edinburgh Centre for Research in Digital Education
The webinar “Ruinous EdTech – Higher Education and Computing’s Excesses” by Colm O’Neill critiqued how educational technology has shifted from tools that enhance education to infrastructures that define its very conditions. Drawing on work on ubiquitous computing, it argues that today’s computing culture is driven by computing maximalism, the assumption that more data, more processing, and more automation are inherently desirable. This excess manifests in always-on systems, infinite storage expectations, and the brute-force use of AI for problems that may not require it. The environmental consequences are severe: data centres are outpacing electrical grids, tech giants lobby against right-to-repair, and decisions like Microsoft discontinuing support for 400 million devices accelerate global e-waste. Corporate climate pledges appear incompatible with the escalating demands of AI, revealing a pattern of grand commitments with little structural intention to follow through.
The session also highlighted questions around who enables these harms, noting that higher-education institutions often legitimise and adopt extractive technologies without accounting for their social or ecological impacts. As an alternative, the notes point toward permacomputing as a decolonial computing practice, one that values sufficiency, localism, repairability, and the deliberate choice not to compute when unnecessary. This approach offers a critical lens aligned with climate justice movements, encouraging forms of knowledge that cultivate resistance to dominant technological power structures and foster meaningful participation in oppositional action.
The webinar can be watched here.
MBBS Symposium
IHSE, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London
The recent MBBS Symposium (04/02/26) provided an opportunity to share progress on the development of the redesigned MBBS programme and to gather feedback from those who will be involved in its delivery. The event brought together faculty and student representatives, primarily from IHSE, alongside colleagues from other schools and multidisciplinary teams including the Digital Education Studio.
A key reflection from the symposium was the emphasis placed on the seven longitudinal themes shaping the programme, including professionalism, reflective practice, creative enquiry and flourishing, digital health and innovation, interprofessional learning, health equity and inclusion health, generalism and whole-person care. It was particularly encouraging to see areas such as creative enquiry and reflective practice explicitly scaffolded within programme design, alongside professionalism as a core capability to be actively taught and developed. The symposium enabled valuable feedback to be gathered, ensuring that a wide range of perspectives continues to inform the programme’s ongoing development.