The LDC Awards 2026 ceremony at a glance

The Learning Design Community Awards celebrate educators who designed a learning activity with FeedbackFruits and shared it with the community as a template that others can reuse. This year, a jury in each of our three regions (APAC, Europe, and the Americas, Africa and Middle East) chose one winner per category, which gives nine regional winners. At the ceremony, we celebrate all nine of them and reveal the three global winners, one in each category.

• When: Thursday 3 December 2026 at 11:30 AEST (Brisbane time)
• Where: live on stage at InspirED 2026 at QUT in Brisbane, and streamed online for everyone
• Cost: free, and everyone who registers receives the recording afterwards

If that falls in the middle of your night, we recommend registering anyway, because the recording will land in your inbox after the event.

Register to watch the ceremony

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Three categories and three global titles

Every learning design entered one of three categories, and each category will have one global winner at the end of the ceremony.

• Active Learning Excellence celebrates learning designs that drive active participation, deeper dialogue and meaningful collaboration between students, such as group work and peer discussion.
• Feedback and Assessment Innovation celebrates learning designs that use feedback and assessment as a driver of real student growth, with structured approaches that go beyond conventional grading, such as peer review and self assessment.
• Leveraging AI in Learning Design celebrates learning designs that use AI with purpose, either by building students' AI literacy or by bringing AI thoughtfully into teaching and assessment.

To choose the regional winners, each jury scored every entry on innovation, usability, impact and overall design quality.

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Hear the stories behind the winning designs

The heart of the ceremony is the educators themselves, as the winners will walk you through their template: the challenge they noticed in their course, how they designed the learning activity step by step, and what changed for their students as a result. It is a chance to see how a design works in practice, so you can picture how it could work in your own course too.

If you would like a head start, every regional winner already has a story you can read and a template you can explore. You can meet all nine regional winners on one page, or read about the winners by region: APAC, Europe, and the Americas, Africa and Middle East.

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What we learned from the 2025 ceremony

The first LDC Awards ceremony took place on 11 December 2025 and was streamed live from Amsterdam. Educators, learning designers and institutions from around the world joined us, and three winners shared the designs behind their awards: Fanny Tsai from UC Irvine in Innovative Assessment Design, Claudia Carrone from EDHEC Business School in Collaborative Learning Excellence, and Sebastian Pahs from Hong Kong Baptist University in Outstanding Engagement Experience.

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During the jury panel, Gilly Salmon from Education Alchemists and Neil Greenley from the University of Hertfordshire Business School shared a few ideas that have stayed with us all year:

• Learning design is as much about culture as it is about technology.
• AI should reduce administrative work and leave more room for human connection.
• Collaboration works best when it is designed with intention.
• Learning design is strategically essential for institutions, rather than an optional extra.
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“We have moved from designing content to designing connection. That shift is critical as we enter the age of AI.”

Gilly Salmon, learning design expert and jury member

We also love seeing how the community keeps growing from one year to the next. Two of last year's winners, Fanny Tsai and Sebastian Pahs, are among this year's regional winners with new designs, and Claudia Carrone helped Michelle Sisto shape one of this year's winning templates at EDHEC.

If you would like to relive the first edition, you can watch the full 2025 ceremony recording or read our highlights from the 2025 LDC Awards.

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A ceremony at the heart of InspirED 2026

This year, the ceremony is part of InspirED 2026, a free day of practical pedagogy at QUT in Brisbane for academics, learning designers and teaching and learning leaders from across Australia and New Zealand. The day brings together keynotes, workshops and a use case fair, and the LDC Awards ceremony is the moment where the people in the room and our global community online celebrate together.

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What comes after the ceremony

The celebration continues after 3 December, as everyone who registers receives the recording, so you can watch the ceremony again at a time that suits you or share it with colleagues. In the weeks after the event, we will also share more content about the global winners and their learning designs, so you can learn more about how they work and bring the ideas into your own courses. All nine winning designs stay available as templates in our Learning Design Community.

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Join us on 3 December

Whether you watch live from Brisbane, follow the livestream or catch the recording afterwards, we would love to celebrate these educators with you. Registration is free and only takes a minute.

Register for the LDC Awards 2026 ceremony