Innovation Through Disruption in Australasia: The 2024 Contextualising Horizon Report

Disruption emerges as a recurring theme in this 2024 edition of the Contextualising Horizon report. In the first instance, disruption manifests as the interruptions to work and study that have become increasingly familiar across the Australasian region—economic challenges, pandemics, earthquakes and increasingly volatile weather events. In the second instance, disruption as a radical break from the status quo also underscores this year’s themes. Increasingly, the perceptions of higher education and its value and role in society are shifting. Calls for work-ready graduates, skills based education and new models and learning pathways are expected. In Australia, the Australian Universities Accord, a government initiative to reshape higher education promises to bring lasting change to the sector. At the same time, the continued proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is challenging the sector to envisage what education will look like now that individuals can with lightspeed outsource the human capacity to assimilate information and create artefacts that have historically been used to evidence individual understanding and ability. The conversations of GenAI in higher education are shifting from reactionary to more nuanced and diverse, as the realisation sets in that we have entered the age of AI.