I approach innovation as a response to a teaching and learning need, not simply the introduction of something new. My goal is to create learning experiences that invite students to participate, make decisions, apply knowledge, and recognise their own progress.
Across my teaching in academic literacy, management, research, and educational leadership, I have increasingly moved beyond explanation and demonstration towards experiences in which students must do something meaningful with what they learn. I use scenarios, collaborative challenges, applied tasks, and digital resources to help students practise skills in ways that resemble the decisions they will make beyond the classroom.
Not every innovation involves technology. Sometimes the most effective change is a better question, a more authentic assessment, or an activity that helps students see why the content matters. When I do introduce digital tools, I want them to provide feedback, opportunities for practice, or access to learning that conventional approaches may not offer as readily.
Making academic referencing an opportunity to practise, rather than a set of rules to memorise.
APA 7 Academy is an interactive learning website I developed to help students build confidence in APA seventh-edition referencing and citation. The resource extends the guided exercises I have used in academic literacy teaching into a self-directed digital experience, where learners can test their understanding, receive feedback, and revisit areas that require more practice.
Designed with students in modules such as COM1024 Academic Literacy for Undergraduates and COM5000 Academic Literacy for Graduate Students in mind, the Academy supports practice beyond scheduled class time. Its development also reflects my interest in using AI responsibly to create instructional resources while retaining educator oversight of academic content and learning design.
Explore the live APA 7 Academy ↗
I design activities that require students to interpret information, defend choices, collaborate with peers, and connect theoretical concepts with realistic situations. These are examples of approaches used in my management and research teaching.
Students work through workplace scenarios, identify the organisational behaviour concepts at play, compare possible responses, and explain the reasoning behind their decisions. Activities such as the “Monday Morning Disaster” and “Manager’s Toolkit” make abstract concepts more accessible through discussion and application.
Strategy activities place students in decision-making roles where they must weigh strategic fit, organisational resources, risks, and possible returns. The emphasis is not on selecting an answer quickly but on building and defending a well-supported recommendation.
Students use guided activities to distinguish research problems, formulate questions, assess design choices, and work through the stages of a proposal. These tasks help make a process that can feel overwhelming more manageable and participatory.
This playable Leadership Theory Challenge demonstrates how workplace scenarios can help learners distinguish among leadership approaches, justify decisions, and receive immediate formative feedback. This digital activity illustrates my use of scenario-based learning to help students apply leadership concepts.
Play the Leadership Theory Challenge →
Play the AI Leadership Decision Lab →
A second interactive demonstration explores responsible AI, staff voice, fairness, privacy, and human judgement in leadership decisions.
In EDU6008 Leading and Managing Change, I have incorporated professional learning and strategic planning tasks that encourage students to connect leadership theory with organisational priorities and practical decisions. Students complete selected LinkedIn Learning courses and receive certificates of completion, creating evidence of professional learning alongside their university coursework.
LinkedIn Learning courses:
Some LinkedIn Learning content requires an account or institutional access.
In EDU5023 Instructional Leadership and Supervision and EDU6012 PhD Seminar: Instructional Leadership, newspaper article assignments provide opportunities for students to communicate educational leadership ideas beyond a conventional academic essay. The following published articles were developed through these classes:
In EDU6015 PhD Seminar: Studies in Educational Administration, professional workshops and manuscript development for potential journal submission connect doctoral learning with scholarly communication and engagement in the wider professional community.
Helping students move from “Where do I begin?” to a workable research proposal.
Research Quest is an interactive research-learning simulation being developed for students in RES3025 Business Research Methods and MAN4990 General Management Research Project. Through a sequence of missions, learners make research decisions, receive formative feedback, collect progress markers in a research passport, and gradually build a proposal blueprint.
The project is intended to make the research process more approachable without oversimplifying the intellectual work involved. Its development also creates an opportunity to examine how AI-assisted educational design might support student engagement and research readiness. Any claims about effectiveness will depend on evidence collected through implementation and evaluation.
I refine these approaches by observing where students struggle, listening to their questions, reviewing the quality of their work, and considering how activities might be made clearer, more inclusive, or more challenging. My next step is to document these innovations more systematically through student feedback, examples of learning, and, where appropriate, scholarship of teaching and learning.