The Lens: Digesting, Doing and Dialogue: A Lens for Learning in a Connected World (Linda Castañeda)

CIC is delighted to welcome Prof. Linda Castañeda as a visiting scholar June-Sept. 2026. Linda is Professor of Educational Technology, University of Murcia, Spain, and will present a 4-part seminar series: Educational Optics: Four Instruments for Seeing and Shaping Learning Spaces

4-5pm AEST • All welcome on Teams • This will be recorded and replayable

Overview: Optics, of course, has two meanings in English — the instruments through which we see, and how something appears from the outside. This series is unapologetically about both. Each of the four seminars introduces a different instrument — a prism, a lens, a mirror, a telescope — not as metaphors for their own sake, but as ways of seeing something that matters: the spaces people build to learn, the spaces institutions inherit rather than intentionally design, and the spaces that AI is quietly reshaping whether we decide to or not. The question running through all four is deceptively simple: what do we want learning spaces to look like — and who gets to decide what they become? These conversations are grounded in research, policy work and practical experimentation across higher education systems and contexts.

Seminar 2 — The Lens: Digesting, Doing and Dialogue: A Lens for Learning in a Connected World

Abstract: How do people organise their learning across resources, relationships and experience? Research on Personal Learning Environments offers a powerful answer: learning is neither contained in a single institution nor driven by a single tool, but distributed across the connections people build throughout their lives. This seminar unpacks that answer through three dimensions — Digesting, Doing and Dialogue — that together explain how learners develop agency, construct knowledge, and navigate connected environments. We close by asking what these same dimensions reveal once AI becomes part of the learning arrangements we inhabit. Drawing on two decades of research on Personal Learning Environments and professional learning, the seminar combines conceptual insights with examples from educational practice and recent work on AI-mediated learning.

Bio: Prof. Linda Castañeda is Professor of Educational Technology at the University of Murcia (Spain) and Visiting Scholar at the University of Technology Sydney. Linda’s research explores how people learn, teach and make educational decisions in contexts of technological change. Her work spans personal learning, academic development, digital competence, educational leadership and the educational implications of artificial intelligence, always with a particular interest in agency, professional judgement and institutional transformation. Over the past two decades, she has led and contributed to numerous national and international research projects, developed conceptual frameworks that have informed educational research and practice, and collaborated with universities and public institutions on digital transformation and professional learning. Her current work brings together theory, policy and educational design to help educators make sense of AI beyond instrumental narratives, with a particular focus on teaching, assessment and professional judgement in higher education. More about her research, publications and ongoing projects can be found at www.lindacastaneda.com.