Change is the new normal in higher education. The challenge is no longer simply how institutions survive disruption. It is how they build the capacity to thrive within it. Generative AI makes this particularly urgent. It is reshaping how students interact with content, educators, peers, assessment, and knowledge. It is also exposing the limits of incremental change.

This session is guided by a simple principle. Design for quality, but also design for distinction. The question is not simply how we add AI to existing education. It is what we should redesign when AI becomes part of the learning environment itself.

Drawing on a framework developed through Rose's research at UCLA Business School, this webinar takes a strategy-to-execution approach to AI-mediated online learning. It explores how institutional strategy can be aligned with programme and curriculum architecture and teaching practice. It considers how AI strategy and technology infrastructure can be translated into sustainable capability for educators and students. The goal is to move beyond isolated innovation towards teaching excellence at scale in AI-mediated higher education.

The session then moves into practical redesign. It examines learning outcomes, assessment, weekly learning architecture, content, active and social learning, faculty interaction and employability. AI is positioned not simply as an answering machine, but as a practice environment for exploration, simulation, critique, creation and judgement. Participants will explore practical examples they can apply immediately.

The facilitator

Rose Babaee, PhD, is an education and transformation leader with more than ten years of experience designing, governing, and scaling education programmes and learning systems across Australia and the United States. She holds a PhD in Education from the University of Tasmania. Most recently, she completed her postdoctoral work at the UCLA Business School, where she served on the UCLA Anderson AI Taskforce, contributed to the School-wide AI strategy, and researched AI adoption, teaching excellence at scale, and institutional transformation.

Rose’s work sits at the intersection of educational strategy, AI and digital transformation, programme and product innovation, operating models, organisational change, scalable learning systems, and online education. She has led multidisciplinary learning design teams and complex programme portfolios, translating institutional strategy and emerging technologies into practical capability systems for educators and learners. Her current work focuses on how institutions can move from isolated AI innovation to coherent, responsible, and scalable AI-mediated education.

The organisers

Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand (FLANZ) and Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia (ODLAA) bring this webinar to you as part of APODE Week. The Asia-Pacific Online Distance Education week will be held from 10 to 12 November 2026 and will explore the topics around learning and teaching at times of increasing generative AI use and how education can stay human. We partner with EDEN Digital Learning Europe who was holding the European Open and Digital Learning Week (EODLW) at the same time.

This event will take place on 12 November 2026 at 1pm NZDT / 11am AEDT. Check your time zone if the event time is not calculated for your time zone above.

The event image is by Element5 Digital, shared on Unsplash.

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