Situated in the context of prolific continuous professional development interventions across international higher education, this paper reports on digital micro learning and lecturer identities. While digital micro learning has been heralded as offering a nonintrusive, granular and engaging approach to continuing professional development, there is a paucity of qualitative studies in this domain. Seeking to bridge this gap, semi-structured, visual elicitation interviews with lecturers in a United Arab Emirates’ college and a document analysis yielded a rich description of the situated learning experiences of the participants. Applying a socio-cultural identity lens, the thematic analysis revealed the avenues for identity reification and the barriers which trigger marginalised identities. Course accessibility advantages, small batch learning and meaningful reflexive opportunities were drivers to engagement, learning and imagining future professional selves. Meanwhile, impediments to digital micro learning which constrained identity negotiation were forced compliance with mandatory courses and perfunctory, ineffective digital peer collaboration.

This paper reports on a research project which involved designing innovative debating materials for gifted students in South Korea. Samples of the created materials are presented along with a detailed literature review and rationale for the choices made in developing these materials.

Digital gamification is becoming more prevalent in higher education, yet a research gap regarding the socio-material imbrications arising from this pedagogical practice and its relationship to lecturer professional subjectivities was discovered. This presentation reports on data from a larger qualitative study conducted in a Middle Eastern tertiary institution where the use of Kahoot! is commonplace. Semi-structured interviews with lecturers from varied academic disciplines and observations of live sessions were conducted. The socio-material narrative analysis revealed the lecturers’ subjectivities as inspirational performers, arising both from their social self-presentations and the embedded digital materiality of the Kahoot! platform. The study contributes to the expanding body of socio-material research in higher education and concludes by suggesting that future studies should attend to both the social and materially produced aspects of lecturer subjectivities in gamification.