Digital Literacy (formerly ICT Capability) is one of the seven general capabilities outlined in the Australia curriculum designed to equip young people with the knowledge, skills, behaviours, and dispositions to live and work in the twenty-first century. Whilst opinion commonly supports the premise that there is a need to prepare our children for a digital world, successfully deploying such programs in schools has been fragmented. In this paper we explore some common factors that lead to a program being successful and identify key areas that require deeper investigation and adoption into practice. This work-in-progress paper will be exploring technology as an educational affordance across curriculum areas rather than a specific subject area. This content will provide a foundation for what factors have been proven to be important in a technology program and where further development is required.

The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has sparked great excitement and expectation of its use in education. Integral to that is the idea of an Automated Response System (ARS). Huge strides have been made in the adaption of ARS in education, although a suitable theoretical framing has yet to be explored, especially in the context of designing an ARS. A previous proposal to use the community of inquiry (CoI) model was presented, but a case could be made that the link between the perception, attitudes and outcomes could be much better explored as part of the design. Hence, a different approach involving the technology acceptance model (TAM) model is explored in this paper toward its use to design an ARS to help statistics students better meet a more holistic learning outcome.

Despite the growing attention paid to conversational chatbots, there is a lack of research in either offering culturally related empathetic strategies when English as additional language learners encounter emotional discomfort or simulating a sense of humour in language acquisition. This paper aims to propose a multivariate normal distribution model for cross-cultural class, BERT for humour detection and response, and NRC VAD to compute empathetic intensity values. The novel algorithm will contribute to significant and long-term outcomes of language learners when exposed to new cultural, cognitive and psychological experiences.

Students studying computer networking often have difficulty with relating theoretical models like TCP/IP with actual components. The use of illustrations and diagrams are only partially successful in helping students to grasp what happens `inside' networking equipment such as routers. Virtual Reality (VR) provides a unique opportunity for students to step inside a router and physically simulate the routing process, helping to build a more solid mental model. This paper presents the design of a novel virtual reality system for teaching elements of network routing. Through providing a physical simulation of network address calculation, it aims to improve student conceptual learning and retention.

This paper describes the use of a 360°-video case study to enhance experiential learning in an ICT systems analysis class. We hypothesize that the use of a visual case study combined with virtual instructions can lead to learning motivation and enhanced learner engagement. This examination follows the conceptualization phase of a methodology to investigate the practical uses of the intervention deriving in learning engagement. A sample of 24 participants from an Australian University was considered. The findings of the study reveal a positive impact on the measures provoking learning engagement and motivation among the participants.