8B -

Tracks
Track 2
Thursday, July 9, 2026
1:45 PM - 4:10 PM
Stephen Riady Centre (SRC) Lecture Theatre LT50 Level 1

Speaker

Agenda Item Image
Dr Andy Tran
Lecturer
University of Sydney

Understanding Student Motivations for Lecture Attendance and Alignment with Performance in First-Year Mathematics and Statistics

1:45 PM - 2:10 PM

Biography

Andy Tran is an education-focused lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney. He teaches introductory data science courses and project-based units.
Agenda Item Image
Assoc Prof Michael Baird
Curtin University

Back to the Future: The return of In-Class Worksheets in Business tutorials

2:15 PM - 2:40 PM

Biography

Michael Baird is an Associate Professor and the Director of Learning and Teaching in the School of Management and Marketing, Faculty of Business and Law, at Curtin University, Western Australia. Michael has taught units in the Curtin Business School in Perth, Sydney, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong since 2004, and since 2013 has focussed his career on teaching scholarship. Michael’s research interests include digital transformation and motivating students to consume learning content, engaging in evaluation and reflective practice to improve delivery of capstone courses, creating and using exam remote invigilation for online assessments, and developing strategies to address contract cheating and academic misconduct. Michael has a Bachelor of Commerce with first class Honours, Masters by Research and a PhD in marketing.
Agenda Item Image
Dr James Mackenzie
Senior Lecturer
Macquarie University

Rehearsal for life: strategies for promoting student learning in real world contexts _ authentic assessments and capstone design 

2:45 PM - 3:10 PM

Biography

James is a senior lecturer in the Bachelor of Arts at Macquarie University. He holds a PhD in American Literature and GradCert in Education/TESOL. He has taught undergraduate courses in English Literature, Media, Communications, Critical Thinking, Arts and Film Studies to students from a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. He has published several articles on the Beat Generation and contemporary sub-cultures. In 2018, he began to undertake roles as course coordinator, curriculum developer and site builder, producing lesson materials, assessment tasks, and course outlines. In his current role, he is helping to shape Macquarie's new and innovative BA program.
Agenda Item Image
Dr Catherine Fargher
Lecturer, Media And Communications
Macquarie University

Co-presenter

Biography

Catherine is an AWGIE award-winning scriptwriter, theatre and new-media producer, whose scripts have been produced for games, transmedia, radio, puppetry, hybrid performance, theatre and children’s theatre by Sydney Opera House, Redmoon Theatre Chicago and ABC Radio National. In 2008 she completed a Doctorate of Creative Arts at Wollongong University, developing hybrid performance texts from a series of original bio-ethical fables. Her play 'Dr Egg and the Man with No Ear', a new media and puppetry production (Sydney Opera House), based on these fables, received critical acclaim and toured the US and Canada from 2008-2010. Catherine won the 2011 AWGIE award for Children’s Theatre for the play. From 2012-2017, she developed the play into an interactive storybook and online puzzle game, 'The Dr Egg Adventures Laboratory', funded by the Literature Brd and Inter-arts fund of the Australia Council. Catherine joined Macquarie University Incubator Hub, to develop the Dr Egg Adventures books, games and interactive online laboratory. An online Laboratory program now operates via EOI in NSW primary schools. An accompanying Research Project, with co-investigators from MQ School of Education, Assoc. Professor Anne Forbes and John De Nobile has been in place since 2020.
Agenda Item Image
Mr Stephan Tseng
University of New South Wales

Who’s Doing the Judging? Rethinking Oral Assessment through AI-Mediated Evaluation

3:15 PM - 3:40 PM

Biography

Stephan is an education-focused academic in marketing and business education with a strong interest in assessment design, student experience, and pedagogical innovation in higher education. His work explores oral and authentic assessment, assessment anxiety, and technology-enhanced learning, with a particular focus on how educational technologies can be used to increase access, equity, student engagement, and wellbeing. Drawing on industry experience and scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), his teaching and research focus on designing scalable, transparent, and equitable assessment approaches that support both student learning and educator judgement. He is particularly interested in how AI-mediated assessment reshapes relationships, responsibility, and trust in higher education.
Agenda Item Image
Dr Zeena Alsamarra'i
Lecturer In Digital Business Transformation And Program Director (Business Informatics)
University of Canberra

Making Sense of Student Experience Data: A Mixed-Methods Institution-Wide Study of SEQ Interpretation and Feedback

3:45 PM - 4:10 PM

Biography

Zeena is a lecturer in digital business transformation with over 6 years of teaching experience at the Faculty of Science and Technology and is the Program Director for the Business Informatics program at the University of Canberra. She is passionate about teaching and empowering students with transferable knowledge and skills to enable them to tackle not only familiar situations, but also new ones as they progress into their professional careers. Zeena teaches across several knowledge areas including information systems management, systems analysis and modelling, business process modelling, knowledge management, IT and business alignment, IT governance, and research design for ICT. In addition to teaching, she is also interested in research on connections between ICT knowledge in theory and practice, digital workplace transformation, leadership in hybrid work - a form of modern work facilitated by digital workplace transformation, as well as other research interests in education.

Chair

Agenda Item Image
Pranit Anand
Senior Lecturer
University of New South Wales, HERDSA Executive, HERDSA Fellow

loading