The Asia-Pacific Online Distance Education (APODE) week is a collaboration between FLANZ and Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA). Webinars will be held between 10 and 12 November 2026 and will explore the topics around learning and teaching at times of increasing generative AI use and how education can stay human. We partner with EDEN Digital Learning Europe who will be hosting the European Open and Digital Learning Week (EODLW) at the same time.
Online teaching ‘Superpowers’: Engagement and belonging
Time: 10 November 2026, 1-2pm NZDT
Register for ‘Online teaching ‘Superpowers’
Teaching online is about more than technology and content. At the heart of the online experience are the humans behind the teaching and the skills they bring to creating engaging, connected, and supportive environments.
This webinar explores how educators can recognise and draw on their existing strengths, their ‘superpowers’, to build a learning culture that supports student engagement, belonging, and success. Without the immediate feedback and interaction of face-to-face learning, teaching online can sometimes feel like communicating into a void. This session shifts the focus from what technology can do to what humans can do to create greater impact.
You will reflect on the human skills that help you feel capable, confident, and connected in your online teaching. Through practical ideas, examples, and shared reflection, we will explore how educator presence, communication, and connection can help create an online culture where both educators and students can engage, connect, and thrive.
The facilitators
Celia Di Iorio, MEd, is an experienced educator and digital learning professional with more than 25 years of experience across primary education, higher education, and online learning. Celia is driven by a passion for creating engaging and connected learning experiences and supporting educators to feel confident, capable, and effective in online environments.
Across roles in primary schools, Swinburne Online, and Australian Catholic University, Celia has worked across teaching, educator development, professional experience, and digital education. As Associate Director, Professional Experience – Education at Swinburne Online, she has led teaching teams and supported the delivery and development of professional experience across multiple education programmes. Her work has also included nationally recognised innovation in technology-enhanced learning and initiatives focused on educator wellbeing.
Celia is the co-author of Keeping Up with Teaching: Strategies for Thriving in the 21st Century and brings extensive experience in mentoring, coaching, and educator development. She is passionate about reimagining online engagement and fostering learning cultures where educators and students feel connected, supported, and able to thrive.
Heather Russell, MBus, is a dedicated higher education professional with extensive experience across tertiary teaching, online pedagogy, and student transition and retention. Driven by a passion for transforming student experience, support, and success, she has led initiatives that strengthen engagement for all learners, with a particular focus on non‑traditional and equity‑priority cohorts.
Across roles at Australian Catholic University, Swinburne University of Technology, and Online Education Services, Heather has championed innovative coaching models, retention strategies, and programme‑wide quality assurance frameworks. As a Course Director, she managed large multidisciplinary teaching teams and was responsible for the delivery of accredited undergraduate and postgraduate programmes across Business, Law, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths), Psychology, and Social Sciences.
With over 25 years of experience coaching students and professionals, Heather brings deep expertise in mentoring, communication, leadership, and team and organisational dynamics. She is passionate about fostering cultures and supporting those who contribute to student capability, confidence, and success.
How can you assess your exposure to AI in certifications?
Time: 11 November 2026, 1-2pm NZDT
Register for ‘How can you assess your exposure to AI in certifications?’
Certification is one of the central trust functions of educational institutions, yet the evidence used to support certification is becoming more complex, particularly in open, flexible, distance, and AI-enabled learning environments. Learners may engage asynchronously, produce evidence across multiple platforms, and use generative artificial intelligence in ways that can support, transform, or obscure the relationship between submitted work and demonstrated competence.
This conceptual and design-based session proposes a model for certification assurance in assessment. The Certification Assurance Quality Indicators (CAQI) model combines the identification of certification assurance risk with the effectiveness of institutional interventions and controls. Read together, these two lenses support professional judgement about residual certification risk after relevant controls have been applied.
CAQI is conceived as a rule-based traceable framework using locally calibrated indicators and weightings, supported by qualitative evidence and human judgement. It is not generated through artificial intelligence, used to rank learners or intended to automate certification decisions. Grounded in literature on assessment validity, authentic assessment in the age of generative AI, learning analytics ethics, dashboard design, and risk-informed quality assurance, the model offers a practical and cautious approach for moving from reactive academic integrity management towards ongoing, explainable, and learner-centred certification assurance.
In this session, you will learn about the CAQI model and interrogate your exposure to AI when it comes to your assessments. You get hands-on practice with the model that you can use as a tool going forward.
The facilitator
Ralph Springett, MA, is the President of the Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand (FLANZ) and the Manager of the Assessment Centre at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. Ralph is also a Director at ReGear Learning Ltd, a company providing eLearning resources and strategy advice for vocational training organisations. In the past Ralph represented distance students while studying extramurally at Massey University.
Teaching excellence at scale in an AI-mediated world
Time: 11 November 2026, 1-2pm NZDT
Register for ‘Teaching excellence at scale in an AI-mediated world’
Change is the new normal in higher education. The challenge is no longer simply how institutions survive disruption. It is how they build the capacity to thrive within it. Generative AI makes this particularly urgent. It is reshaping how students interact with content, educators, peers, assessment, and knowledge. It is also exposing the limits of incremental change.
This session is guided by a simple principle. Design for quality, but also design for distinction. The question is not simply how we add AI to existing education. It is what we should redesign when AI becomes part of the learning environment itself.
Drawing on a framework developed through Rose’s research at UCLA Business School, this webinar takes a strategy-to-execution approach to AI-mediated online learning. It explores how institutional strategy can be aligned with programme and curriculum architecture and teaching practice. It considers how AI strategy and technology infrastructure can be translated into sustainable capability for educators and students. The goal is to move beyond isolated innovation towards teaching excellence at scale in AI-mediated higher education.
The session then moves into practical redesign. It examines learning outcomes, assessment, weekly learning architecture, content, active and social learning, faculty interaction and employability. AI is positioned not simply as an answering machine, but as a practice environment for exploration, simulation, critique, creation and judgement. Participants will explore practical examples they can apply immediately.
The facilitator
Rose Babaee, PhD, is an education and transformation leader with more than ten years of experience designing, governing, and scaling education programmes and learning systems across Australia and the United States. She holds a PhD in Education from the University of Tasmania. Most recently, she completed her postdoctoral work at the UCLA Business School, where she served on the UCLA Anderson AI Taskforce, contributed to the School-wide AI strategy, and researched AI adoption, teaching excellence at scale, and institutional transformation.
Rose’s work sits at the intersection of educational strategy, AI and digital transformation, programme and product innovation, operating models, organisational change, scalable learning systems, and online education. She has led multidisciplinary learning design teams and complex programme portfolios, translating institutional strategy and emerging technologies into practical capability systems for educators and learners. Her current work focuses on how institutions can move from isolated AI innovation to coherent, responsible, and scalable AI-mediated education.