Background/context: Those students who connect the variety of experiences, perspectives and articulations across their degrees are able to say about what influences their learning journeys: ’It was everything, all my assignments, all my feedback from my assignments’ (Willison et al 2023, p.25). Seeing the overlaps and connections of everything, the perception of an holistic learning journey, is profound and helps students transfer their knowledge and skills from diverse ways of thinking and doing to subsequent learning and to application in employment. Teachers, employers and students crave this capacity to grasp the holistic nature of learning in a way that enables transfer to new contexts.
Description: When students and teachers perceive the connections between otherwise disparate aspects of learning, students are more likely to make the metacognitive connections and operate with reinforced, multi-faceted thinking. For example, analytical techniques vary widely across subjects, yet we want students to be analytical thinkers who are not locked into technicalities.
Method: Synthesis of empirical literature
Evidence: Research using the Models of Engaged Learning and Teaching (MELT: Willison, 2020) has articulated a variety of connections with otherwise understated overlaps.
Contribution: Understating overlaps can confuse students and reinforce a ‘silo’ mentality, isolating the learning possible across disciplines and pedagogical practices. This presentation will provide the audience with a model that allows the articulation of similarities in diverse learning experiences.
Engagement: The audience will collaboratively identify the overlaps between two or more educational elements they are familiar with and share their insights with the larger audience.

Focus: This presentation examines a model of microcredentialing that bundles individual courses into formal qualifications. Unlike the traditional unbundling approach, which often fragments educational content potentially at the expense of depth and coherence (Desmarchelier & Cary, 2022; Czerniewicz, 2018), this innovative model is designed to provide stand-alone, yet stackable, cohesive and academically robust pathways to higher education.
Background/Context: Lifelong learning is essential in the evolving job market, with microcredentials emerging as key enablers (Oliver, 2022). The unbundling of traditional degrees into smaller components has raised concerns about educational fragmentation, commodification and inequality. This model offers the opportunity to bundle low-cost, stand-alone microcredentials addressing challenges of accessibility and academic rigour (Pachler, 2023).
Description:
Each microcredential in the model is aligned to AQF Level 5, and specifically designed to meet the learning outcomes of two 12.5% credit-weighted units. Featuring 50 stackable, 10-hour/1-credit point microcredentials, the model offers choice across transferable workplace skills and industry-relevant technical knowledge, enabling personalised, targeted educational pathways.
Method: The model’s uptake and outcomes are evaluated through qualitative feedback from participants and industry stakeholders, along with quantitative measures including enrolment numbers and completion rates. These insights collectively ensure continual refinement and responsiveness to educational and workforce needs.
Evidence: Participant numbers rose from 204 to 560 this year, with positive feedback and successful outcomes validating the model's impact, supported by its use in the Australian Department of Education, Skills and Employment Advanced Apprenticeship Pilot in 2023/2024.
Contribution: This microcredential model contributes to educational practice by aligning standalone, shorter-form offerings with higher education pathways. It resolves common issues from unbundling courses—like loss of coherence and depth—by ensuring each microcredential is constructively aligned and academically robust.
Engagement: The session will encourage discussions on the future of higher education, focusing on how bundling microcredentials can facilitate academically robust lifelong learning and access.

Focus: Research outcomes / practical application.
Background/context: Immersive block models aim to increase student engagement and performance by offering a more focused way of learning (McCluskey et al., 2020; Roche et al., 2024). In such models, students study 1–2 units over 4–8 weeks and are typically engaged through active learning pedagogy (Samarawickrema et al., 2022). While evidence has begun to emerge about the effectiveness of immersive block models (Buck & Tyrrell, 2022; Loton et al., 2022; Wilson et al., 2023), there is a lack of longitudinal evidence. This presentation reports evidence from a 3-year period and outlines a method of tracking outcomes of curriculum reform.
Description: From 2021-2023, a 6-week immersive block model underpinned by active learning pedagogy was introduced across all disciplines at a regional, public Australian university.
Method(s): An institutional dashboard has been developed to enable real-time and longitudinal views of student outcomes in the immersive block model. This dashboard can be filtered for various student cohorts from 2019 onwards. Interviews with university leadership (n=5) highlight the importance of tracking impact.
Evidence: The dashboard shows statistically significant (p < .05) increases in student pass rates and grade point averages in the immersive block model across all faculties and colleges from 2021 to 2023, and significant decreases in early withdrawals and absent fails. Student satisfaction has not changed significantly but remains high overall.
Contribution: The presentation provides longitudinal, institution-wide evidence of how an immersive block model is affecting student performance and satisfaction across all disciplines at a public university. It also demonstrates how a dynamic institutional dashboard can be used to evidence the impact of curriculum change.
Engagement: Polls will be used to explore current knowledge and expectations of immersive block models. Discussion prompts will encourage conversation about how outcomes can be tracked and reported during curriculum change.

Focus: Within the university setting, there have been some reports about this issue from the perspective of students and on academic-to-academic experiences; however, very little explores student-to-academic sexism and sexual harassment of casually employed university teachers.
Background: Recently, there have been numerous reports of workplace sexism and sexual harassment across various industries (AHRC 2020, Hitch 2021, Broderick 2022, Cooper, 2022, King 2022), indicating that the problem is systemically and culturally embedded, not a random occurrence.
Description: This presentation draws on casually employed university teachers' accounts of sexism and sexual harassment with attention on students as the perpetrators. The focus on casuals is due to the large proportion of teaching done by casuals in universities. Because of risk and fear, related to the precariousness of their employment, casuals are often reluctant to report incidents.
Method: Two projects collected survey data (n=204) and conducted 43 follow-up interviews.
Evidence: The data revealed high instances of sexism and sexual harassment among casual academic teachers. Women and gender-diverse people were the only respondents to report instances of sexism and sexual harassment. Additionally, intersectional women, especially those who were sexuality, culturally and/or linguistically diverse, were at greater risk of sexism and sexual harassment.
Contribution: The research contributes to the many recent reports of workplace sexism and sexual harassment, which have implications for the economy, society, culture, and health. For example, Deloitte (2020) estimates an average cost of nearly $5,000 per victim, and $2.6 billion in lost productivity for workplaces and the broader economy. Because sexism and sexual harassment are so widespread, all workplaces should be working to identify the issues, discuss solutions and actively try to prevent it from occurring.
Engagement: Voice actor recordings are integrated into the presentation to contextualise and enhance participant accounts.