AI is no longer on the horizon – it's in the room. It's in our assessments, our feedback, our learning systems, and increasingly our classrooms. The question for higher education is no longer whether to engage with intelligent technology, but what we choose to protect, prioritise, and design for in response.
Higher Education Horizons 2026 brings together educators, researchers, learning designers, and institutional leaders from across the Asia-Pacific to explore The Human Edge – what humans bring to learning that matters most, and how we build education systems that amplify it.
Across three interconnected themes – Agency, Authenticity, and Architecture – this symposium surfaces emerging research, practical solutions, and provocative ideas at the intersection of pedagogy, technology, and institutional design. From assessment integrity to learning analytics, from Universal Design for Learning to Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, HE Horizons 2026 is a space for the work that's already happening and the conversations that need to.
Agency, authenticity, and architecture do not reside in any system, but in the human capacity to make and take responsibility for deliberate human choices consciously aimed at making better learning possible.
This is not a conference about AI. It's a conference about people – and the education systems we're building around them.
We invite submissions aligned with (but not limited to):
Tim Fawns — Associate Professor (Education Focused), Monash Education Academy, Monash University
Tim Fawns is Associate Professor (Education Focused) at the Monash Education Academy, Monash University, Australia. Tim’s research interests are at the intersection of digital, professional (particularly medical and healthcare) and higher education, with a focus on relations between technology and education. Tim’s research covers a broad range of practices (including curriculum design, assessment, teaching practice, and evaluation), emphasising complexity within online, blended and hybrid education. He is an institutional lead for the AIinHE.org student perspectives on AI project, has recently contributed to the influential Australian Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) Assessment reform for the age of artificial intelligence guidance document, and played a leading role in a range of sector-wide events to help institutions respond to the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence.
Designing entangled humans: tensions of agency, authenticity and architecture in education
| (Extended deadline) Extended abstract submission | 20 July 2026 |
| Notification of outcomes | 27 July 2026 |
| Public registration open | 30 July 2026 |
| Presenter registration deadline | 15 August 2026 |
| Event date | 25 September 2026 |
For enquiries, please contact: learningfutures@rmit.edu.vn
