Submissions to the conference may be research papers, practice papers, or workshops.

The Conference Technical Committee may opt for an Abstract screening process prior to full paper submissions. Papers will be published in English.

Authors must indicate the submission type at the time of full submission. All research papers and practice papers are subject to a double-blind peer review process; however, only research papers are eligible for publication in the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education. Workshops and practice papers will not be published in the Proceedings.

Submissions with a commercial focus are evaluated on their academic merit, methodological rigour, and relevance to the conference themes. The Proceedings do not accept promotional, marketing, or purely descriptive content that lacks critical analysis or research value.

The peer review process is double-blind, meaning that authors and reviewers remain anonymous to each other. Anonymity cannot be guaranteed if authors have shared an earlier version of their submission on a preprint server.

At least two peer-reviewers will conduct the peer-review. The peer-reviewers will be independent experts in the field of engineering education and are selected and appointed by the Chair of the Conference Technical Committee.

The peer-reviewers for the research papers will not be part of the Conference Organising Committee nor the Conference Technical Committee. The peer-reviewers for the practice papers can be part of the Conference Organising Committee and/or the Conference Technical Committee.

Reviewers will be typically invited from the Australasian region, but invitations can be extended to other reviewers in other regions, depending on subject-matter expertise requirements.

The peer-reviewers will assess the quality of the paper and its contribution to the field. The quality criteria include

A. Value of the contribution – originality, significance, and relevance to engineering education research or practice.

B. Relationship to existing knowledge – comprehensive literature review and clear connection between the current study and existing research.

C. Research design – appropriateness of methodology (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods), robustness of the evidence base, and validity of interpretation of results.

D. Presentation – clarity and structure of writing, logical flow and readability, and adherence to page limits and formatting guidelines.

Peer reviewers will provide comments and rate each paper against each quality criteria according to a three-point scale

• Good
• Amendment needed
• Insufficient

The Conference Technical Committee will recommend one of the following decisions to the Conference Technical Committee Chair

• Accept – Paper meets all criteria for inclusion in the Proceedings.
• Provisionally Accept / Revise – Minor or major revisions required.
• Reject – Paper does not meet standards.

The determination of the outcome is based on the following

• If all criteria are rated “Good” by all reviewers, the paper may be accepted.
• If any of Criteria A to C are rated “Insufficient” by any reviewer, the paper is rejected.
• If Criterion D (Presentation) is rated “Insufficient” by any reviewer, the paper may be provisionally accepted.

If any criterion is rated “Amendment needed” by any reviewer, the paper may be provisionally accepted. Authors of provisionally accepted papers will have the opportunity to resubmit a revised version. The resubmission must include a letter to the Conference Technical Committee Chair detailing how reviewer comments have been addressed. The revised paper will be reassessed by the Technical Committee based on the original criteria. If a research paper is still not accepted as a research paper, authors may be offered the option for it to be accepted as a practice paper.

If a paper is rejected, the Conference Technical Committee Chair may offer the authors an opportunity to reclassify the paper as a practice paper, which will not be published in the Proceedings. Authors are advised that acceptance of research papers in the Proceedings is not guaranteed.

Neither the Chair of the Conference Technical Committee nor the Conference Technical Committee guarantees manuscript acceptance or shortened peer-review timelines.

The Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education is owned and managed by the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, a joint technical society of Engineers Australia and Engineering New Zealand.

The Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education are overseen by the Australasian Association for Engineering Education.

The Editor for the proceedings will be the Chair of the Conference Technical Committee and the editorial team consists of the members of the Conference Technical Committee.

The Chair of the Conference Technical Committee reports to the Conference Portfolio Lead on the Australasian Association of Engineering Education’s Executive Committee.

The Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education are published by Engineers Australia, on behalf of the Australasian Association of Engineering Education.

The contact information for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education is:

Australasian Association for Engineering Education

c/- Engineers Australia

Engineering House

11 National Circuit

Barton, Australia 2600

aaee@engineersaustralia.org.au

AAEE2026 Conference

The Conference Portfolio Lead is:

Associate Professor Enda Crossin, University of Canterbury, New Zealand

The Conference Technical Committee for the 2026 conference is:

Dr. Peter Neal, UNSW Sydney, Australia (Chair and Editor in Chief)

Authors are expected to meet one or more of the following criteria

• A significant contribution to the conception or design of the research
• The acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data
• The development of methods, tools, or software integral to the research
• Drafting and revising it critically for significant intellectual content

In addition, all authors must have approved the final version to be published and agree to take responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the work. Authorship order is at the discretion of the authors. Authors must disclose any financial or commercial affiliations that may represent a potential conflict of interest.

Copyright for all research papers published in the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education remains with the authors. Authors retain the right to use, reproduce, and distribute their work for non-commercial purposes, including sharing on personal websites, institutional repositories or other third-party sites.

Authors grant the Australasian Association for Engineering Education a non-exclusive license to publish, distribute, archive, and assign a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to their work in both print and electronic formats, including publication via Engineers Australia’s Informit platform and the AAEE website in PDF and HTML format, solely for the purposes of dissemination, citation, and indexing. No other rights are assigned, and authors remain the copyright holders.

All research papers published in the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License, which allows sharing, copying, distributing, and adapting the work for non-commercial purposes only, provided proper attribution is given to the original authors. To view a copy of the license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Authors are permitted to post the final accepted manuscript or published article on personal, institutional, or non-commercial repositories, provided that the CC BY-NC license and DOI are retained.

Generative AI Policy

Generative AI tools cannot be listed or credited as authors or co-authors. The Technical Committee will not accept disclaimers that attribute responsibility for the work to AI systems. Maintaining clear human accountability is a core principle of authorship and publication in the Proceedings of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education.

The use of generative AI tools must be clearly and unambiguously disclosed by authors. Authors are required to specify which tool(s) were used (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, etc.), and for what purpose the tool was used (e.g., language editing, coding assistance, summarization, or figure generation). This disclosure must appear in the Acknowledgments section of the paper. Failure to disclose or attempts to conceal the use of AI tools will be regarded as a breach of ethical publishing standards.

Generative AI tools may be used to support research and writing processes, provided that such use is disclosed. Acceptable uses include improving language clarity, grammar, or style, assisting in code generation, supporting data visualisation or figure creation, and development of ideas or outlines, provided that the final manuscript reflects the authors’ original intellectual contribution. All outputs must be verified by the author(s) and author(s) remain responsible for the accuracy, validity, and originality of all content, regardless of AI usage.

Unacceptable use of generative AI tools include for the creation of references, fabrication of data or results, manipulation of research findings of using generative AI to generate substantial proportions of papers.

The Technical Committee, Technical Committee Chair, and Reviewers are expected to evaluate submissions based solely on their expertise. The use of Generative AI tools to generate review reports, recommendations, or decisions is not permitted. Reviewers may use AI-assisted language editing tools for improving clarity in their own comments but remain responsible for the reviews submitted.

The submitting author may be charged a publication fee of AUD $10 ex. GST per research paper submission, payable at the time of submission. This fee applies to all submissions, whether accepted or not. Neither the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) nor the hosting conference institution is liable for refunds if a paper is not accepted for publication.

The Australasian Association for Engineering Education is committed to maintaining the highest standards of research integrity, including for publishing in these proceedings. All submissions (research papers, practice papers and workshops) are expected to adhere to ethical research and publication practices, including appropriately citing relevant literature, obtaining formal ethics approval for human-related research, accurate reporting of data, and honest authorship. The management of malpractice is described below.

Detection and Prevention

The Australasian Association of Engineering Education and the Conference Technical Committee will not knowingly permit research misconduct in any publication.

All submitted manuscripts may be screened for plagiarism and text overlap using a professional detection system, such as TurnItIn, or other institutional plagiarism detection software at the discretion of the Conference Technical Committee.

The Conference Technical Committee Chair, Conference Technical Committee and reviewers are responsible for identifying potential ethical concerns, including plagiarism, self-plagiarism, citation manipulation, data fabrication, or other forms of research misconduct.

Initial Assessment

If a potential issue is identified, the Chair of the Conference Technical Committee will conduct a preliminary assessment, in consultation with the Conference Lead from the AAEE Executive Committee. The corresponding author will be contacted by the Chair of the Conference Technical Committee for clarification or explanation.

Formal Investigation

If concerns are substantiated, the Conference Technical Committee Team will follow COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines or equivalent best-practice standards. An investigation may involve consultation with the author’s institution or co-authors, requesting raw data, or other verification measures.

Outcomes

If misconduct is confirmed, the Conference Technical Committee may take actions including:

• Rejection of the manuscript
• Retraction or removal of the paper if already published
• Notification to the author’s institution for further investigation

Transparency

All decisions regarding research misconduct will be documented and communicated to the authors involved.

The Australasian Association for Engineering Education will maintain records of confirmed misconduct.

Liability

The Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE), the Conference Technical Committee, the host organisation, and professional conference organisers will not be liable for any publication, processing, or conference-related fees or costs already paid, including for papers that are rejected or withdrawn due to an outcome from this process.

Complaints and Appeals

In the first instance, authors may contact the Conference Technical Committee Chair to raise concerns, which will be investigated fairly and promptly. In the second instance, authors may contact the Australasian Association of Engineering Education’s Conference Portfolio Lead

Conflicts of Interest

All authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose any real or perceived conflicts of interest.

Ethical Oversight

Research involving human participants or animals must comply with relevant ethical standards and institutional approvals. Authors are expected to include statements of ethical oversight where applicable.

Intellectual Property 

Authors retain copyright of their work. By submitting a paper, authors grant the Australasian Association for Engineering Education a non-exclusive license to publish and distribute the work in the conference Proceedings. Proper acknowledgment of third-party materials is required.

Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

The Proceedings support the correction of errors or discussion of published work. Authors may submit corrigenda or errata.

The Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education are published annually, within three months of the conclusion of the conference.

Readers can access the Proceedings for free via the https://aaee.net.au/search-all-publications/ . Additionally, the Proceedings are available free of charge on InformIt for three months after publication. After this period, members of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education can access the Proceedings at no cost through Engineers Australia’s library portal: https://portal.engineersaustralia.org.au/content/library-resources-and-services

If the Proceedings are no longer published, electronic copies of all papers will remain accessible through multiple repositories to ensure long-term preservation. All papers are permanently archived on the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) website. In addition, copies are maintained and accessible through Engineers Australia’s Informit platform, providing redundant backup and continued access to the full Proceedings, even if the proceedings are no longer published.

The costs associated with processing, publication, and long-term storage of the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) are supported by the conference host institution and the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE).

A processing fee of up to AUD $10 can be charged by the conference host for each research paper submitted to the Proceedings at the time of submission. Should a paper not be accepted as a research paper (for Scopus indexing), the processing fee will be refunded. This fee covers the cost of assigning a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to accepted papers. In addition, all conference delegates (including authors) pay a registration fee to the conference host. The host then pays a capitation fee to the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, which serves as one of the society’s revenue streams. These funds are used to support the society’s activities, including maintaining the website that stores the conference papers.

Engineers Australia provides in-kind support by hosting the Proceedings on the Informit repository at no cost to the society.

All roles related to the editorial and review process – including the Executive of the AAEE, the Conference Technical Committee, the Conference Organising Committee, and peer reviewers – are voluntary and unpaid. Editorial decisions are made independently and are not influenced by any fees or revenue sources. Members of the Conference Technical and Organising Committees may receive complimentary conference registration as recognition for their contribution.

The Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) do not contain paid advertising, and the Australasian Association for Engineering Education does not receive income from advertising.

Sponsorship for the annual conference is managed independently by the conference host. Sponsors may be acknowledged within the Proceedings, typically in a dedicated section or page at the beginning or end of the publication and may include the sponsors’ names and logos. These acknowledgements are for recognition purposes only and are not linked to editorial decision-making or to specific papers.

Advertisements or sponsorship materials do not appear alongside scholarly content, and there is no advertising on the Informit repository or AAEE website where the Proceedings are hosted.

Direct marketing activities conducted on behalf of the Proceedings are minimal and limited to notifying the AAEE community and potential contributors of submission and publication information. Such communications are appropriate, targeted, and factual, and information about the Proceedings and the Society is truthful and not misleading.