1 August 2025
The annual Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) conference was held in Perth, Western Australia this year in early July. A number of the CRADLE team had the opportunity to attend HERDSA 2025 and present their research. Read on for some reflections on what the team found at the conference.
Juuso Nieminen is a Senior Research Fellow with CRADLE and has been collaborating with CRADLE since his PhD candidature in 2018 at the University of Helsinki.
Juuso focuses on the social, cultural, and political dimensions of educational assessment. This includes student agency, assessment design and student identity formation. Juuso’s work also covers inclusion, diversity, and belonging in higher education. He is particularly interested in examining how assessment takes shape, and shapes people, in a social world.
Dr Paige Mahoney is a Research Fellow at CRADLE. Paige has a Doctorate of Philosophy and holds a first-class honours degree in Professional and Creative Writing and History.
Paige has worked on a range of research projects examining pedagogical and professional issues in higher education, including sessional academic staff, assessment feedback, inclusive pedagogies, and academic identity. Her own research explores the complex intersections between history and fiction, gender and memory, and regional and national identities.
Dr Thomas Corbin is a Lecturer with CRADLE. Prior to joining us Tom taught critical thinking at Macquarie University, where he was a lecturer in the Philosophy Department.
His main research focus is on Education and Assessment Design at the intersection of Generative Artificial Intelligence and Work. Tom’s background in philosophy and critical thinking shapes how he approaches complex questions about AI’s role in education – focusing on both practical challenges and deeper implications for teaching and learning. In his spare time, he conducts research on Australian species of Cicada.
Nicole Crawford is a Senior Research Fellow, currently working on several research projects at CRADLE. She was an Equity Fellow at the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) and an educator in pre-degree programs at the University of Tasmania.
Nicole’s research interests include equity and inclusion in higher education, student and staff mental wellbeing, and enabling education.
Dr Laura Hughes is an Associate Research Fellow and has a background in biomedical sciences, psychology and addictions.
Laura has research interests in feedback literacy, behaviour change and broadly higher education teaching and learning. Laura is currently working on the ARC Discovery Project Feedback literacy for effective learning at university and beyond.
Jack Walton is a Lecturer within CRADLE. He holds a Bachelor of Music, and his PhD developed a theorisation of assessment in university music education.
His main research interests include assessment, judgement, and creative practice. Jack is fascinated by how people come to know quality, how they express themselves in situations where quality matters, and how education helps (and sometimes totally hinders) these ways of knowing and creating.
The question that interests Jack most right now is this: How can assessment practices value divergence in students’ expressions of achievement?
Kevin Dullaghan is an Associate Research Fellow with CRADLE. Kevin assists the team with their research and manages the CRADLE Blog, website, and newsletter.
Kevin is interested in all areas of higher education research, particularly conducting surveys and interviews, identifying trends, and managing data. He first started with CRADLE looking into the murky world of contract cheating.
Professor Jaclyn Broadbent is Pro-Vice Chancellor, Academic Experience, a Professor of Psychology and a member of CRADLE. Jaclyn’s background is multidisciplinary, with PhDs in Psychology (2011) and Education (2021).
Jaclyn’s leadership has been acknowledged through prestigious awards for innovative teaching practices, including Deakin Teacher of the Year (twice), an AAUT Teaching Excellence Award, and a Citation.
Jaclyn’s research focuses on online self-regulated learning as well as the development, evaluation, and translation of effective online teaching strategies to ensure student success.
Dr Helen Walker is CRADLE’s Research Manager. Helen is responsible for the coordination of all internal and external research practices including compliance, governance, funding and contracts, reporting impact, and data management.
Professor Rola Ajjawi has a Bachelor’s Honours Degree in Physiotherapy and worked as a physiotherapist and clinical educator before moving into academia full-time.
Rola conducts research into work-integrated learning, assessment and feedback, evaluative judgement, professional identity formation, and student engagement, failure and persistence. Rola is one of the top Australian researchers in these fields.
Rola is Deputy Editor of the journal Medical Education and on the editorial board of Teaching in Higher Education.
Associate Professor Joanna Tai has a background in higher and health professions education.
Joanna’s research interests include student perspectives on learning and assessment from university to the workplace, peer-assisted learning, feedback, assessment literacy, developing capacity for evaluative judgement and research synthesis.
Professor Margaret Bearman is CRADLE’s Professor of Research. Margaret holds a first class honours degree in computer science and a PhD in medical education.
Margaret’s interests are broad ranging and include assessment in university education, feedback in healthcare contexts, simulation and learning in a digital world.
Recognition for her work includes Program Innovation awards from the Australian Office of Learning and Teaching and Simulation Australasia.
Professor Phill Dawson is Co-Director of CRADLE.
Phill is most known for his research on feedback, cheating and artificial intelligence in assessment. His work is highly cited, and he ranks 6th internationally in the field of higher education research over the past five years (ScholarGPS).
In his feedback research, Phill is currently leading an ARC project into supporting students to make the most of feedback through developing their feedback literacy. This longitudinal study uses behaviour change techniques from the health and social sciences to help students develop and use feedback capabilities not just at university, but also in their graduate working lives.
In his cheating and artificial intelligence research, Phill is currently collaborating with Deakin colleagues on a major project on how to design assessment that is valid and appropriate for a time of artificial intelligence. This project builds on work Phill co-led that was funded by TEQSA.
Deakin Distinguished Professor David Boud is Co-Director of CRADLE.
Professor Boud is also Emeritus Professor at the University of Technology Sydney. He is Australia’s most internationally renowned educational researcher in higher education. He is a global leader in the fields of higher education, workplace learning, and assessment and feedback.
His work is used both by researchers and scholars committed to the development of teaching and learning and he has changed the foundations of assessment practice through pioneering research and development.
