The story behind the LDC Awards

In June 2024, we opened the Learning Design Community, a shared space where educators from institutions around the world exchange their most effective learning designs as templates that others can reuse. Behind every one of those designs is someone who asked a simple question: how can this be better for my students? That work usually happens quietly, so we created the Learning Design Community Awards to bring it into the light, and after a successful first edition in 2025, the awards are back for a second year.

This year, we introduced regional rounds for the first time. Educators submitted learning activities they built with FeedbackFruits in three categories: Active Learning Excellence, Feedback and Assessment Innovation, and Leveraging AI in Learning Design. In each region, a jury of learning design experts reviewed every entry on innovation, usability, impact and design quality, and chose one winner per category. With three regions (APAC, Europe, and the Americas, Africa and Middle East), that makes nine regional winners, and three of them will become this year's global winners.

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Meet the three winners from the Americas

Active Learning Excellence: Michael-Benjamin Minotti, Boston University

The challenge: in a programme with more than 500 students, real discussion is hard to organise. Students rarely engage with each other's thinking, and many find it difficult to connect legal risk to their own experience.

The design: Michael-Benjamin built a Discussion activity around podcasts. Each student records a two to four minute podcast on one of several prompts about red flag legal issues, analysing a real world issue and linking it to their own experience. Students then listen to the podcasts of two classmates and discuss them in FeedbackFruits, and those who want to go further can join an open discussion and reflect on how it shaped their understanding. Grades are based on completing the discussion, and the number of peers, the topic and the grading can easily be adapted to other courses.

What changed: even in a programme of this size, every student now explains their thinking out loud and responds to their peers, which turns a large cohort into a real learning community.

You can read the full story of this design or use the template in your own course.

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Feedback and Assessment Innovation: Max Chao, UC Irvine

The challenge: in an in person course built around team case studies, teams present their analysis live and one other team critiques each presentation. That means most of the class simply watches, and the teams that are not on stage have little reason to engage closely with the analysis.

The design: together with Monica Huffman, Max redesigned the critique so that every team takes part, not only the presenting and the critiquing team. Using Group Member Evaluation, each team submits a critique after class with a shared rubric that covers content, delivery and overall impression, giving one score and constructive comments on behalf of the group. Reviewers stay anonymous, so presenting teams do not know which team wrote which feedback. Critiques are graded on quality and completion, which makes careful listening part of the assessment.

What changed: every team now plays an active role in every presentation, and presenting teams receive structured feedback from the whole class instead of from just one team.

You can read the full story of this design or use the template in your own course.

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Leveraging AI in Learning Design: Fanny Tsai, UC Irvine

The challenge: many students accept the first summary an AI tool gives them. That summary can sound convincing while being inaccurate, oversimplified or incomplete, and students do not always check it against the original source.

The design: Fanny designed a three step Peer Review activity that works in any discipline and at any course level. First, students summarise the same scholarly source with three generative AI tools, compare the outputs on accuracy, clarity, completeness and usefulness, and verify the key claims against the original text. Next, they create a short explainer of one key concept, claim or question for a specific audience, as a written response, narrated slides or a video. Finally, they review the explainers of two classmates on clarity, accuracy, accessibility and audience alignment, naming one strength and one specific suggestion in every review.

What changed: students learn to use AI as a starting point rather than a final answer, while they practise source verification, clear communication and constructive peer feedback. Fanny also won an LDC Award in 2025, which makes this her second award in two editions.

You can read the full story of this design or use the template in your own course.

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What connects the three winners from the Americas

All three designs turn students who would usually sit back and listen into students who take an active part. At Boston University, a cohort of more than 500 students becomes a learning community through podcasts and discussion. At UC Irvine, every team becomes a critic during live presentations, and students learn to question the first answer an AI tool gives them.

Warm congratulations to Michael-Benjamin, Max and Fanny, a big thank you to Monica Huffman for helping to shape one of the winning templates, and thank you to every educator who shared a design with the community this year.

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Join us at InspirED on 3 December

The nine regional winners are now in the running for three global titles, one in each category. We will reveal the global winners live at InspirED on Thursday 3 December 2026 at 11:30 AEST, from QUT in Brisbane and online for anyone who would like to join. In the Americas, that is the evening of Wednesday 2 December, at 5:30 pm Pacific and 8:30 pm Eastern time, and everyone who registers also receives the recording afterwards.

In the meantime, you can meet all nine regional winners from APAC, Europe and the Americas, or browse many more learning designs in our template library.

👉 Discover the LDC Awards and register for the ceremony