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martinbbetts

In Featured, Opinions, Podcast, Student Experience Podcast

EP221. Collaboration already happening

Episode 6 of The AI Inflection Point — and the last of four conversations on coalitions.
The previous three episodes asked why collaborate, whether partnerships can be transformational, and whether scale is the answer. This one asks something simpler: what does it actually look like when you do it?
Lou Conway built the Country University Centre network — 28 federated centres across regional Australia, where students can study with any provider that makes sense for them. No merger required. Bruce Lines led the integration office that created Adelaide University out of two institutions, and is honest about what worked and what didn’t. Belinda Tynan is navigating a region where coal mines are closing and the university has to respond. And Heather Margrison graduated from Adelaide Uni through the merger — and was part of the student panel that helped design it.
What comes out of this conversation isn’t a blueprint. It’s something more useful — a set of hard lessons from people who actually did it.

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In Featured, Opinions, Podcast, Student Experience Podcast

EP220. Collaborative scale: the case for working together

Episode 5 of The AI Inflection Point — the third of four conversations on coalitions.
Dan Greenstein has 35 years of data from the UK and the US. His conclusion is direct: scale is the primary hedge against financial unpredictability. In Australia, more than 40% of institutions have spent most of the last five years in deficit. Organic growth is too slow. And the policy window won\’t stay open indefinitely.
Noah Pickus joins to push on the tension that every leader in the room was thinking: does scale come at the cost of identity? Dan\’s answer might surprise you.

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In Featured, Opinions, Podcast, Student Experience Podcast

EP218. Innovation in AI: Together or alone?

Episode 2 of The AI Inflection Point — six conversations recorded at the HEDx 2026 conference in Sydney. The diagnosis is set. Now: what does it actually take to respond?
Lucy Marshall from the University of Sydney names what most leaders know but rarely say out loud — universities don’t have an innovation problem. They have a culture problem. Fear is the barrier. Not budget, not technology. Fear.
Then Aleks Subic, who built an innovation precinct in the heart of Birmingham, and Grant Robertson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Otago, answer the same question from the outside in — by changing where the university stands in the world, and who it stands for.
If the barrier isn’t technology but culture — what does it actually take to change a university from the inside?

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In Conference, Featured

HEDx Australian AI Innovation Coalition

Is Your University Disrupting Itself? If Not, Who Is?

Why this matters

Tertiary education is at a genuine inflection point. 

It faces the disruption of AI from within — in how students learn, how knowledge is created, and how institutions operate — and increasing competition from new entrants who are not constrained by decades of infrastructure, tradition, or regulation.

But this disruption is also an opportunity.

Universities and tertiary institutions have a rare chance right now to take charge of education, of lifelong learning, of the public good they were built to serve. To emerge from this period not as casualties of disruption, but as its architects. To restore and deepen their value to students, to communities, and to society.

The institutions that move now — boldly, intentionally, resourcefully, and with peers alongside them — will define what higher education looks like in the decade ahead.

What is the HEDx and EVR AI Coalition?

To meet this moment and help drive the change needed, HEDx and Educate Ventures Research (EVR) have jointly developed a facilitated coalition programme for universities serious about transforming operating models and the student experience with AI. 

The coalition approach grew out of EVR’s schools and colleges coalition — a programme brought to life by the people in it, through their own action. Carrying that origin into higher education, this is a joint HEDx and EVR initiative: EVR as co-originator and evaluator, HEDx as facilitator and convener.

The coalition is working in partnership with the 2050 Alliance, Australia’s network of universities committed to equity-led innovation in higher education, and is building an international advisory board of leaders across industry, education and research.

How it works

Each institution takes on one substantive AI project — working it through to a live result by Demo Day on November 5, 2026, and sharing progress with the cohort along the way. 

Projects can focus on any area — operations, student experience, curriculum redesign, people and capability, or external relations — but should have a clear line of sight to broader institutional transformation. 

The cohort meets regularly, with defined outputs and actionable commitments from every session. HEDx and Educate Ventures Research (EVR) co-facilitate, with EVR also providing an independent evaluation framework developed through the Shape the Future School and College Leaders Coalition in the UK.

Between sessions, institutions are supported, with findings feeding into a shared evidence base the whole sector can learn from.

The cohort is the engine: by actively contributing, members generate and share evidence, build a national knowledge base, and shape the AI landscape in the interests of students and educators.

A parallel UK cohort launches in September 2026. Both cohorts share findings and come together for a joint showcase in 2027.

Projects institutions are exploring 

Our founding institutions are already working on ambitious projects that aim to transform how universities work, teach, and deliver value for students. These include:

  • Personalised learning for access to marginalised communities
  • AI-powered predictive insights for student retention
  • Coordinating AI support across research and teaching
  • Improving graduate employability through stronger employer connections
  • Fundamentally revising curricula — and the assessment that evidences learning — in light of AI-driven changes to skills and knowledge
  • Reimagining assessment design for an AI-native world

Demo Day: November 5, 2026 

Every institution in the cohort presents a live result of where they are up to at the second HEDx conference in 2026. It is this accountability that we believe will make the difference.

Want to know more?

If you would like to get involved, provide feedback, or simply find out more — we want to hear from you. Get in touch with the Director of Innovation and Engagement, Annabel Murphy at annabel@hedx.com.au or +61 405 611 421 

In Opinions, Podcast

EP 212. The future campus is already here

Alex Elibank-Murray of UniSC hosts a panel of colleague Leah Barclay, industry partner Tracey Whitelaw and student Callum Phillips to argue that the future of higher education may not be a classroom at all. In this episode, we explore immersive learning, XR technologies and the rise of virtual campuses — revealing how universities are already being transformed by AI, storytelling and real-world industry collaboration.

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In Opinions, Podcast

Where will higher education’s Spotify come from?

Professor Kristian Widen is Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Cooperation and Innovation at Sweden’s industry-engaged Halmstad University, after a distinguished career at its leading research university in Lund. In describing the diverse landscape of a well-funded and stable Swedish university system, he observes that many if its staff and students are happy and calm, including regulators. With little loss of social license they are under little pressure to disrupt. But in his role he is mindful of how this pervaded in Swedish retail and entertainment sectors before Ikea and Spotify emerged. Where will the most likely disruption of global higher education come from, by incumbents or new entrants, and where in the world offers greatest promise to nurture it?

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In Opinions, Podcast

Learning from the expertise economy

Kelly Palmer led global corporate learning at LinkedIn, Degreed, Yahoo and Sun Microsystems. Inspired by the audacious gaols of Silicon Valley, her mission is to change the way the world learns. She has spent a career pursuing that mission in corporate learning settings before bringing the expertise to bear as Chief Strategy Officer at Southern New Hampshire University. She coined the term The Expertise Economy in a book that outlines how learning in the global economy has shifted from degrees or credentials to skills and expertise. The move from ‘what we know’ to ‘what we can do’ is now widespread in a world transformed by AI as Kelly outlined as a keynote in the recent Singapore applied learning conference where we first met.

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In Opinions, Podcast

How skills education drives productivity growth

Soon Joo Gog, Tracey Donnery, Patrick Kidd, and May Sok Mui Lim join the podcast. Skills Future Singapore, SkillsNet Ireland and FSO in Australia are skills initiatives within national tertiary education systems. Ireland has the world’s highest productivity and Singapore ranks second in global competitiveness. As Australia’s competitiveness is challenged by national economic productivity being unchanged in 20 years, should we develop national skills strategy alone or learn from the best? This panel from the recent Applied Learning Conference at Singapore Institute of Technology compares national approaches in Singapore, Ireland and Australia.

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In Opinions, Podcast

What is an achievement wallet?

Sarah DeMark is an assessment expert leading education and workforce outcomes as Vice Provost at Western Governors University. This is the worlds largest university, is online, and soon turns 30 years old. Its education model is competency-based, equity-oriented, and based in Utah. It pioneers recording and demonstrating the future-work skills of its learners through an achievement wallet. It is in the vanguard of a tech-enabled global skills agenda. And as co host Mike Hale from VitalSource argues it provides a scalable foundation for external partnerships that are serving WGU students and alumni and others in the lifelong learning ecosystem.

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