Research background and purpose Digital transformation is driving educators to adopt innovative methods for digital teaching to facilitate student learning. Due to transformation, upskilling has become a top priority for educators in key competencies such as creative thinking and digital competencies to develop innovative curriculum (Redecker, 2017). Educators must enhance their creative thinking, adaptability, and artificial intelligence (GenAI) proficiency to develop teaching strategies that foster students' critical thinking and interpersonal skills while advancing their own 21st- century competencies to effectively convey these skills through enhancing digital capabilities (Lidolf & Pasco, 2020). The European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu) (Redecker, 2017), outlines a set of areas and digital competencies that educators should possess to enhance their teaching methods, foster digital literacy among students, and improve the overall teaching and learning experience (Caena & Redecker, 2019). DigCompEdu lacks the details in using digital technologies such as learning management systems, digital content creation tools and GenAI. This highlights the necessity for creative thinking, agility and flexibility in modifying teaching approaches to align with innovative curricula. These competencies are crucial for transforming educators' mindsets towards a focus on ongoing professional development in digital teaching and learning. Curriculum development involves planning, implementation, and evaluation which has a broad scope (Ornstein Hunkins 2017). However, curriculum design is aligning learning strategies, materials, and experiences to defined outcomes (Taba, 1962; Tyler, 1949). Whereas curriculum models focus on the outcomes of a curriculum which involves managing, designing, and organizing learning objectives, competencies, and standards within a curriculum. This seems to be the common approach across higher education curriculum. The process of designing curriculum with the end in mind is commonly referred to as “backward design” (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998). Backward design starts with the outcomes and then works backwards to address the content, topics, strategies, and materials. One of the key tools important to backward design is the use of learning objectives taxonomies. One of the most widely used of these taxonomies is Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956). Bloom’s Taxonomy organizes learning objectives based on a level of learning. Digital transformation in higher education is driving the need for educators to enhance digital capabilities for teaching and learning. This includes exploring innovative curriculum design, and the impact of technology on curriculum delivery (Tight, 2024). The extant literature on curriculum development and educator digital competencies in hospitality higher education is scarce and fragmented. To effectively integrate competencies for utilising educator pedagogical competencies which includes digital resources, teaching and learning, assessment, and empowering learners does not align with contemporary curriculum development models. This absence highlights a significant opportunity for a study to expand on the literature regarding a design thinking approach (Ornstein & Hunkins, 2017) to curriculum development and digital competencies in hospitality higher education. Reflecting on these gaps, the objectives of this study are twofold: (1) To explore the stages of curriculum development practices and how design thinking can be incorporated into the curriculum development process in hospitality higher education, and (2) To examine GenAI tools’ integration with Design Thinking and explore curriculum design alternatives. Methodology To effectively address the objectives, this study utilises a mixed method approach that combines qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. The process unfolds through two multi-step stages, described as follows: Stage 1: Qualitative research This stage is structured into three following steps: Step 1: Identification of curriculum development processes across hospitality management programs offered by universities and other higher education providers across Australia. This initial stage involves a comprehensive search to catalogue curriculum. Step 2: Analysis and comparison of the curriculum development components across the identified programs. This includes core courses, digital resources, teaching strategies, authentic assessments, and empowering learners. Step 3: In-depth content analysis to extract digital competencies within the curricula. This stage focuses on: Examining the objectives, content, and pedagogical approaches utilized in core, specialized, and elective courses. Stage 2: Quantitative research In this phase of the research, an empirical analysis will be undertaken to develop and validate a conceptual framework that explores the impact of curriculum development process. These hypotheses will be empirically tested using data gathered through a questionnaire survey administered to educators in higher education in hospitality higher education programs at Australian institutions. The study employs a Partial Least Squares- based Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) approach, encompassing both measurement model evaluation and structural model evaluation, to rigorously test the hypotheses and validate the proposed conceptual framework. Originality/Value Building on the long-standing tradition of curriculum development approaches, and the design thinking concepts, the proposed study represents the first attempt to explore and validate the conceptualisation of curriculum on the formation digital competences within the literature of hospitality curriculum development. Additionally, it seeks to extend the extant literature on curriculum development formation by validating the influence of design thinking and perceptions of digital competencies within higher education.

Illegal material is increasingly appearing on popular mainstream websites.Many commentators worry about the impact of such material on adolescents’ psycho-sexual development and the potential for some legal pornography to act as a gateway to child sexual exploitation material for users of any age. In this study, we collected publicly available data from a popular legal pornography website to assess the risk of adolescent exposure to content that may hinder healthy psycho-sexual development. We analysed over 27 million customer searches involving 149 video tags from this site. Five international experts on the effects of pornography rated the tags, categorising them into five overlapping genres: mainstream, incestuous, underage, aggressive and non-consensual. They also assessed the potential risk each genre posed.Our analysis found a significant positive correlation between the harm ratings and the frequency of tags used as search terms. Additionally,eleven of the twelve tags with the highest mean risk scores involved potential underage and/or incestuous content. This study highlights a concerning relationship between the harm ratings of various pornographic genres and their popularity as search terms. While exploratory, these results emphasise the need for regulatory measures to address the presence of harmful material on mainstream websites.

The increased adoption of digital systems in the maritime domain has led to concerns about cyber resilience, especially in the wake of increasingly disruptive cyber-attacks. This has seen vessel operators increasingly adopt Maritime Security Operation Centers (M-SOCs), an action in line with one of the cyber resilience engineering techniques known as adaptive response, whose purpose is to optimize the ability to respond promptly to attacks. This research sought to investigate the domain-specific human factors that influence the adaptive response capabilities of M-SOC analysts to vessel cyber threats. Through collecting interview data and subsequent thematic analysis informed by grounded theory, cyber awareness of both crew onboard and vessel operators emerged as a pressing domain-specific challenge impacting M-SOC analysts' adaptive response. The key takeaway from this study is that vessel operators remain pivotal in supporting the M-SOC analysts’ adaptive response processes through resource allocation towards operational technology (OT) monitoring and cyber personnel staffing onboard the vessels.

Online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is a growing problem. Prevention charities, such as Stop It Now! UK, use online messaging to dissuade users from viewing CSAM and to encourage them to consider anonymous therapeutic interventions. This experiment used a honeypot website that purported to contain barely legal pornography, which we treated as a proxy for CSAM. We examined whether warnings would dissuade males (18–30 years) from visiting the website. Participants (n = 474) who attempted to access the site were randomly allocated to one of four conditions. The control group went straight to the landing page (control; n = 100). The experimental groups encountered different warning messages: deterrence-themed with an image (D3; n = 117); therapeutic-themed (T1; n = 120); and therapeutic-themed with an image (T3; n = 137). We measured the click through to the site. Three quarters of the control group attempted to enter the pornography site, compared with 35 % to 47 % of the experimental groups. All messages were effective: D3 (odds ratio [OR] = 5.02), T1 (OR = 4.06) and T2 (OR = 3.05). Images did not enhance warning effectiveness. We argue that therapeutic and deterrent warnings are useful for CSAM-prevention.

This workshop will develop your knowledge and skills for designing education programs for falls prevention research. It will include enhancing your skills in how to critique, develop, implement, measure and report educational interventions and outcomes.

This is a presentation that was given at a VATL LIT Workshop, sharing the experiences of Holmesglen Library in setting up an Institutional Repository.