Digital & Future Literacies

This includes values around inclusion, social justice, and approaches that are fundamentally student-centred and strengths based (Bennett et al., 2018)

Examples of this in online and blended modes include:

• Providing opportunities for digital community building and sharing from the outset. This could include engaging students in a discussion of class etiquette to co-develop rules of conduct for interacting online. You could also offer an ongoing ‘Casual Chat’ page where students can choose to share news or appropriate updates from their personal lives.
• Orientation or ‘Week 0’ activities that provide the opportunity for students to practice engaging through the LMS in a low-stakes way that can allow early identification of additional needs.
• Incorporating an Introductions page as part of your online course, where students can ‘meet’ each other, offer information about their personal or professional history and share what they hope to achieve in studying the course. This page could also link to the AIATSIS Map so students can acknowledge and share the land they live and work on.
• Inviting students to draw connections between weekly concepts learned and their own lives and experiences. Carefully chosen videos are a useful resource that can offer real life examples to learn about discipline concepts.
• Recognising the importance of cultural safety for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other diverse communities and embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and perspectives.

Online FFUR courses should be designed so that students are not passive recipients of content but engage through doing, discussing and reflecting. Active learning includes scaffolded tasks such as problem-based activities, low-stakes quizzes, collaborative group work, and authentic assessment tasks that allow practice and application. Dialogical learning emphasises reciprocal exchange between students and educators as well as peer-to-peer dialogue and building knowledge collectively rather than transmitting it one-way (Motta and Bennett, 2018).

Examples of this in online and blended modes include:

• Short ‘micro-lessons’ either interactively or through videos that are ‘just in time’ academic literacies relevant to that week. Units can include a weekly, interactive asynchronous page devoted to academic literacies that are expanded upon in synchronous learning opportunities and encourage students to keep a glossary of key terms that is added to throughout the course.
• Synchronous interactive H5P activities embedded into weekly modules, such as drag and drop, quizzes with feedback and interactive scenarios.

This involves using quality assurance standards that emphasise inclusivity, accessibility, and the core principles of UDL, providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and expression. At the FFUR level, UDL also requires recognising digital equity as a real challenge for many students. This includes issues such as limited access to appropriate hardware, software, internet connectivity, safe study spaces, and the digital literacies needed to participate effectively. Institutions share responsibility for addressing these challenges (Stone, 2016) through initiatives such as laptop‑loan schemes, discounted devices through the student union, and 24‑hour Wi‑Fi in secure study areas on campus.

Assessment design should also acknowledge students’ varied learning contexts and be suitable for online and flexible modes of study. This includes maintaining authenticity, academic integrity, and enabling principles.

Examples of this in online and blended modes include:

• Using a consistent layout, structure, and navigation across the LMS for all courses, regardless of discipline. This is especially important in FFUR courses, where students may have little prior experience with an online LMS. Consistent design makes the “hidden curriculum” more visible by demystifying the online environment and reducing students’ cognitive load. Stone (2017) highlights that clear, consistent structure and intuitive navigation support student retention: when learners can easily find their materials, know how to move through the course, and access support services, they are more likely to complete successfully.

Teachers should be actively engaged and visible across all teaching spaces, including online environments. Research consistently shows that strong teacher‑presence is essential for building students’ sense of belonging, identity and community. FFUR programs take a broad view of ‘teacher‑presence’, extending it to include visibility and connection with institutional support services as well.

A collaborative approach to online learning that integrates support services, the people behind those services, and provides these supports just in time is more likely to strengthen students’ institutional knowledge and contribute to retention (Stone, 2016). Embedding opportunities for connection and support also helps cultivate online community and enhance students’ sense of belonging (Irwin & Hamilton, 2019).

Examples of this in online and blended modes include:

• Providing a visible and active teacher-presence, for example, by using LMS analytics to provide personalised messages to students are inactive or who should be congratulated on their efforts.
• Posting weekly or regular announcements or videos that address key issues in the course as they arise and provide important updates and expectations.
• Maintaining a clear presence in discussion forums by responding to posts, weaving concepts together and modelling academic language and conduct.
• Building community by providing opportunities for students to share their own experiences and relate those experiences to content, achieved through platforms like discussion forums or Padlets.
• Using break out rooms in facilitate group work or problem-solving activities that require interactivity and using group messages to acknowledge progress within the course.
• Collaborating with support services by incorporating shared resources or linking to services in context, providing drop ins or in-class time facilitated by support services, and embedding support service details within courses including photographs alongside information.
• Strengthening institutional relationships through consistent branding and layout to emphasise the connection between FFUR courses and undergraduate courses within the institution.

High quality asynchronous learning material and engagement opportunities should exist alongside opportunities for synchronous interaction with peers and educators. Accompanying this, there should be clear articulation around how and when students should engage with material to ensure the most ideal student experience.

Examples of this in online and blended modes include:

• Clear communication about expectations in terms of what is required and what is good to do.  This could include consideration to communication channels, weekly checklists and indication of participation norms.
• Balancing clear expectations with opportunities for autonomy. For example, making asynchronous learning materials available well in advance of required completion, with guidance as to pacing; structuring catch-up or conceptually less challenging content at peak assessment periods.
• Using the LMS to engage meaningfully with students showing signs of disengagement or challenges including reduced interaction, reduced attendance, extension applications, or late assessment submissions.
• Building opportunities for flexibility where possible. For example, provide submission or engagement windows, and recordings of sessions that do have fixed times.

Educators should remain responsive to current research on best practice in FFUR courses. Recent literature highlights the importance of ongoing student feedback and the continuous improvement of units and courses based on insights from students and staff, performance against agreed evaluation metrics, and developments in technology and pedagogy. This includes embedding student voices through co‑design processes.

Courses should also be benchmarked against recognised sector frameworks for online learning (e.g., TEQSA Online QA Toolkit, 2017; ACODE TEL Benchmarks, Sankey et al., 2024) to ensure quality is monitored and enhanced.

Examples of this in online and blended modes include:

• Implementing course review processes that specifically evaluate online components.
• Providing regular professional development opportunities for educators.
• Establishing clear institutional guidelines for online delivery.
• Using learning analytics and qualitative student feedback to identify and action improvements.
• Facilitating student co‑design forums to inform ongoing refinement.

As with on-campus delivery modes, educators must reconsider what student engagement and success look like in online FFUR spaces. Learning analytics can be helpful in identifying when students may benefit from check-ins or additional support. However, analytics alone cannot capture the depth of engagement or whether transformational learning is occurring.

Understandings of success in FFUR should shift from metrics-driven ideas of completion and transition into undergraduate courses to more nuanced understandings of success as non-linear. This recognition is especially critical for online learning environments, where attrition rates are typically higher and transition rates into undergraduate study lower. These metrics are shaped by factors outside the unit or course itself, including the important low-stakes nature of online FFUR education, positive attrition, and the lived experience of compounding disadvantage (Allen, 2025).

Examples of this in online and blended modes include:

• Tracking multiple forms of engagement and recognising that engagement may be intermittent due to competing life commitments. Educators can use LMS data and short, personalised communications to reach out to students whose engagement patterns suggest they may need support, and to open dialogue about available services or potential ‘re-entry’ points into the unit.
• Incorporating reflection tasks that encourage students to map out their progress, celebrate achievements, and identify areas for further growth helps students redefine what success means for them. In FFUR online contexts, many successes happen off-screen, between modules, or after the unit concludes, and may not be quantifiable in metrics such as transition into undergraduate study.
• Using strengths based and inclusive language helps students stay motivated, build confidence and understand their learning in ways that acknowledge achievements beyond narrow or quantitative measure.

AI can serve as a powerful assistive technology for students with diverse needs. This includes helping neurodivergent students organise and reprocess material, supporting students with communication disabilities or those learning in a second language, and aiding students in various aspects of learning and assessment.

AI offers opportunities for personalised student support, including personalised learning paths and content. AI tutoring chatbots, mock interviews with AI avatars, and real-time feedback systems can be accessed at any time, catering to individual learning preferences and schedules.

GenAI risks widening existing digital divides, particularly for marginalised, low-income communities and countries (Liu, 2024). Equitable access requires deliberate interventions to provide AI tools and infrastructure for all students and staff.

GenAI is not a neutral tool; it reflects and reproduces the cultural, linguistic and epistemological assumptions embedded in its data. Rather than merely viewing these biases as technical flaws, educators can examine how such tools intersect with the structural inequalities already present in higher education (Grammatica, 2025).

There is a risk that GenAI could lead to an over-reliance on technology, potentially causing the atrophy of essential cognitive skills like critical thinking, intellectual development, creativity and originality of expression. Therefore, GenAI tools should be used in an educative mode to extend cognitive abilities and support ethical intellectual habits (James, & Andrews, 2024)