ICERI 2025: Notes From the International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
ICERI 2025 lived up to its name, presenting an overwhelming abundance of ideas. Around 860 educators, researchers and practitioners from more than 80countries came together to learn and share at the intersection of teaching, design, and technology. Across three days I frenziedly attended workshops, keynotes, and papers, across 10+ parallel sessions, following my particular interests in XR, games, participatory design, and the shifting role of AI in higher education.
My own paper, Polyvocal Histories Through Augmented Reality, satin the XR/AR/VR track and drew a lively audience of around forty. You can see a video abstract summarising this research at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFqOi6V9GeM or read the paper in full at https://radar.gsa.ac.uk/10433
It was received well, particularly for the conceptual and anti-racist framing, although the questions revealed how unfamiliar many participants still are with decolonisation—even within global education contexts. That insight, echoed elsewhere in the conference, will shape how I contextualise this research going forward. The paper’s originality in terms of creative polyvocal design was also commended by delegates.
KeyThemes
Games & Gamification
A cluster of papers on game-based learning and gamification (very annoyingly all scheduled at the same time) offered a range of examples from serious games for programming education to narrative-driven flipped learning and design-centred gamification approaches. Several papers will be useful examples for Serious Games students, especially those exploring motivation and player experience. AI-enhanced gamification also surfaced, showing how adaptive systems can support sustainability and research-skills learning.
Peace-Gaming & Anti-Racism
I was particularly delighted to connect with Rana Ahmed Amin, whose work on peace education and non-formal learning tools for refugee inclusion resonated strongly with my own interests and my work on UK-based peace-gaming research. Her presentation, "Playing for Peace", highlighted impressive work in this area. Together with other researchers, there is real potential for a cross-institutional peace-education group. Given continuing polarisation of political and social viewpoints (as emphasised in the Global Risk Report2025), this work feels increasingly urgent.
AI in Education
AI dominated the schedule even more than last year—sometimes insightful, sometimes repetitive. The keynote by C. Edward Watson cut through the noise:learning diminishes when AI shortcuts the process, and AI literacy must be balanced carefully with the pedagogic value of doing the work.
A hands-on workshop on AI agents was particularly interesting as a potential avenue for development within The Glasgow School of Art, (e.g. the automation of administrative teaching tasks inside a VLE) although it is hard for me to visualise how these tools could be integrated with our existing structures without a great deal of specialist knowledge.
Participatory Design & the MIT D-Lab Toolkit
Amy Smith’s keynote, questioning whether human-centred design isbecoming less human, was particularly memorable. The MIT D-Lab ParticipationCompass toolkit stood out as a genuinely practical resource. Having used thephysical card deck in a workshop, I propose that it will be valuable for bothstudents and researchers within SIT who are planning their approach to(realistic and well-scoped) participatory research.
XR, AR & Storytelling
XR papers ranged from ethical frameworks for extended reality to art education with AR, to VR/AR environments for wellbeing. Against this landscape, my own work on polyvocal AR histories sparked interest precisely because it foregrounds culture and politics rather than novelty. The conversations highlighted a gap in awareness around decolonising practices, an important reminder of who we imagine as our audience, and why these methods matter.
Several strands have clear practical value for the School of Innovation and Technology at GSA:
- Integrating the Participation Compass into teaching and research design
- Exploring AI agents and mature, workload-reducing uses of AI
- Bringing XR and polyvocal methodologies into broader curriculum conversations
- Offering game-based learning exemplars for student work
- Continuing to develop our own AI literacy in a fast-moving landscape, and how we transfer these skills to students in appropriate and ethical ways.
In the end,ICERI felt a bit like a dense forest with many routes and too little time to walk them! As with any large conference, not everything aligned with my interests, but I left with feelings of both inspiration and urgency:inspiration from the creativity on display, and urgency to make space for more critical, humane, and culturally grounded approaches to teaching with technology. The key challenge is turning these ideas into practice within SIT, across GSA, and in my wider networks.
The conference website is at https://iated.org/iceri/ and the proceedings are now available online.
This blogpost was summarised by ChatGPT5 using original write ups by Daisy Abbott, and moderately edited by Daisy Abbott into this version.