Peer-to-peer conversation: From AI Policing to Integrity by Design: The Learning Designer as Translator in AI-Enhanced Higher Education

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TOPIC

From AI Policing to Integrity by Design: The Learning Designer as Translator in AI-Enhanced Higher Education

SPEAKER(S)

Liezl Wagenaar

ABSTRACT

As generative AI becomes embedded in higher education, institutions are being challenged to move beyond detection, restriction, and policy-policing approaches towards more purposeful models of AI readiness and digital transformation. This session will reflect on practical work being done at GIBS to redesign learning and assessment for an AI-enhanced environment. It explores how AI can be integrated into assessment design without compromising academic integrity; how students can be supported in using AI ethically and critically through prompting and reflection frameworks; and how learning designers can act as translators between faculty expertise, institutional strategy, and rapidly evolving technologies. The session will share practical examples, including AI-integrated assessment design, student-facing AI literacy frameworks, and approaches for supporting faculty in designing learning experiences that remain meaningful in a world where AI exists.

BIO

Liezl Wagenaar is an Instructional Designer at GIBS, University of Pretoria, where she designs postgraduate academic programmes for online delivery and leads the adoption of AI-enhanced practices in learning design. Her current work focuses on the ethical integration of AI into teaching, learning and assessment, with particular attention to accessibility, academic integrity, and designing meaningful human–AI interactions rather than passive tool use. In 2025 she presented at the Flexible Futures Conference on prompt literacy in higher education and the evolving role of faculty in the GenAI era, from content creators to content curators.

Liezl has worked in EdTech for over fifteen years. Before joining GIBS, she was a Learning Designer at Construct Education, building online programmes for institutions including Oxford Saïd Business School, Harvard, King’s College and Michigan Ross on platforms such as Canvas, Open edX and D2L Brightspace. Earlier in her career she partnered with iNeSI, NEMISA, MICT SETA and the University of Limpopo to deliver digital literacy and device access to nurses, teachers and unemployed learners across rural Limpopo, and co-authored MICT SETA computer literacy textbooks.

Prior to her move into education technology, Liezl spent more than a decade in television and corporate media as a director, scriptwriter and executive producer, creating training and induction content for Anglo American, Lonmin, De Beers and Nedbank, as well as broadcast programmes for SABC and DSTV. That storytelling background continues to shape her conviction that good learning design, like a good story, begins with the end in mind: the learner ready to apply what they have gained. She is currently completing her Master’s in Creative Writing at Rhodes University.

Email address: WagenaarL@gibs.co.za

Please extend this invitation to any other interested parties at your university