Published 18 December 2024
The Innovation Incubator (soon to be renamed the Education Innovation Hub) is a collaborative initiative between the PVCE Portfolio and IT that was launched this year as a trial. It aims to be a catalyst of educational innovation by transforming ideas, especially those that leverage AI and other emerging technologies, into practical, scalable and impactful solutions for the student and staff experience.
Using the double-diamond design thinking framework, the program guided 15 Nexus Fellows and educational developers through a journey of ideation, problem analysis and user testing. Participants were mentored to ensure their solutions were fit-for-purpose, aligned with UNSW strategy, policy, and guidelines, and had the potential to be seamlessly integrated into the university’s digital learning ecosystem as outlined in the UNSW Educational Technology Roadmap 2024-2028.
Celebrating Innovation: Showcase Highlights
The 2024 journey culminated in an Innovation Incubator Showcase, where participants presented their concepts to peers and a panel of leaders from PVCE and IT. The standout innovations, recognised with awards, included:
- ‘Riley: Your Personalised Feedback Coach’, developed by Dr Mark Ian Jones and Dr Sharon Aris from the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture. It reimagines feedback delivery, ensuring it is personalised, easily understandable and actionable for students, and thus enhancing student engagement with their feedback. Recognised for its future vision, this project won the People’s Choice Award and one of the panel’s Future Impact Awards, underscoring its significant potential to reshape student learning experiences.
- Applauded for its innovative use of existing technology (Microsoft CoPilot), from the Faculty of Engineering, Dr May Lim’s project 'CoPilot for In-Class Assessment and Feedback' enhances the effectiveness and efficiency of assessment and feedback for in-class groupwork. May's creative approach earned one of the panel’s Future Impact Awards, recognising its immediate potential to positively impact teaching and learning.
While these projects won the top accolades, all the showcased innovations, as listed below, were outstanding. They demonstrated creativity and ingenuity, and exemplified UNSW’s commitment to fostering educational innovation that benefits both staff and students.
- Dr Alan McCarthy: ‘AInstein’ for Maths: Individualising and contextualising assessment through AI for first-year students.
- David Lawrey: Pelican AI: Personalised, scalable support for English language learning, with AI -powered guidance on pronunciation, vocabulary and fluency.
- Dr Dhanushi Abeygunawardena, Diana Saragi Turnip, Prof. Patsie Polly and A/Prof. Priya Khanna Pathak: E3: UNSW Educational Experience Ecosystem – A dashboard to consolidate learning journeys, ePortfolios and competency tracking to foster a programmatic approach to learning.
- Dr Fiacre Rougieux, Jon Xiating Cai, Minnie Singh-Murphy: CareerWIL AI – Designing future-ready graduates through mapping competency gaps between industry needs and our programs, and embedding industry-relevant skills into our curriculum.
- Dr Jasper Hsieh: A better tech solution for grouping online students based on prior knowledge
- Morgan Harris: ‘Smart Groups’: Building teams with purpose (without excel!) for a variety of pedagogies
- Dr Yingli Sun: TeachFeedback AI - AI-driven feedback for educators on their teaching practice that is timely, confidential, formative and individualised, with suggestions for delivering engaging lectures.
The Innovation Incubator (soon Hub) team will continue to follow these projects closely to help them navigate the next steps.
Plans for next year and beyond
Building on the success of the pilot, the Education Innovation Hub is set to expand its reach next year, inviting wider participation from across the UNSW staff and student community. This broader scope aims to cultivate a vibrant culture of collaboration and innovation, providing more opportunities for transformative ideas to evolve into impactful solutions that reflect UNSW’s vision for a world-class digital learning experience.
The Hub’s key objectives are two-fold: to support and develop staff’s capability to innovate, and to enhance both the student and staff experience with EdTech innovations. Importantly, these objectives are intrinsically aligned with UNSW’s developing drafts of the ‘Progress for All’ strategy – not only with its Education Pillar but with several other strategic impact pathways. The Hub also aligns with the recommendations of the Innovation Working Group (formed in response to the Insights staff survey findings), which advocated for establishing a robust innovation infrastructure and developing an innovation culture through training, empowering staff and students to bring bold ideas to life.
Get involved
If you are passionate about transforming education and want to learn more about the Education Innovation Hub, please visit the SharePoint page or contact Jennifer McAleer or Amanda Yeung from PVCE Portfolio. Stay tuned via UNSW Education News for updates and opportunities to join this exciting initiative in the coming year!