APPETD

🚨 THE COUNTDOWN IS ALMOST OVER! 🚨

The wait is finally coming to an end… the APPETD ED-TECH Conference is almost here! 🎉

Get ready for an exciting and insightful experience filled with innovation, expert speakers, engaging discussions, and the latest trends shaping the future of Education and Technology.

⏳ Have you registered yet? If not, now is the time! Don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity to connect, learn, and be inspired.

👉 Click the link to RSVP and secure your spot today

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The Future of Education Starts Here!

Are you ready to transform the way you facilitate, assess, and deliver learning?

Join education leaders, facilitators, trainers, and innovators at the APPETD 2-Day Ed-Tech Conference 2026, where we explore how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies are reshaping education and skills development.

📅 10 – 11 June 2026
📍 Eduvos Bedfordview Campus, 1 Osborne LaneBedfordview, Johannesburg, 2008
💻 Virtual and In-Person attendance available

✨ Discover practical AI tools for education
✨ Learn from industry experts and thought leaders
✨ Network with professionals driving innovation in learning and development
✨ Gain insights that will help you stay ahead in a rapidly evolving educational landscape

Whether you're an educator, trainer, assessor, learning designer, or education leader, this conference is designed to equip you with the knowledge and strategies needed for the future of learning.

🎟️ Secure your seat today!

Register: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=zHTPi8UqT02pd7tRxbRQf0ZbBmUaUqpOkn4437td34NUREdSNDNZREhFS1U2NEhUVDhTVEE0R0RQOS4u

📢 IMPORTANT NOTICE: GAUTENG CAPACITY BUILDING WORKSHOP POSTPONED

Please note that the Gauteng Capacity Building Workshop has been postponed from the previously advertised dates. New Workshop Dates: 13 - 14 August 2026
We would also like to inform stakeholders that the workshop dates for KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape and Gauteng have been updated.

✅ Register now to secure your place.
Limited seats are available and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Don't miss this opportunity to participate in our capacity-building programme and engage with industry experts and stakeholders.

🚀 COUNTDOWN TO THE APPETD 2-DAY ED-TECH CONFERENCE! 🚀

⏳ Only a few days to go until we bring together leading minds in Education, AI, Innovation, and Learning Technology!

Get ready to be inspired by an exceptional line-up of presenters who are shaping the future of education and workplace learning. From AI-powered curriculum design, ethical AI in assessment, inclusive digital learning, gamification, and learning analytics, this conference is packed with insights you cannot afford to miss!

🌟 MEET OUR INCREDIBLE PRESENTERS & THEIR BIOS 🌟

⚡ This is more than a conference — it’s a glimpse into the future of learning. Whether you are an educator, facilitator, assessor, training provider, EdTech enthusiast, or institutional leader, this event is designed to equip you with practical tools and future-focused strategies.

⏰ The countdown is ON! Don’t miss your opportunity to learn from leading experts and innovators in the field.

LearningInnovation ArtificialIntelligence DigitalLearning ProfessionalDevelopment

🚀 COUNTDOWN TO THE APPETD 2-DAY ED-TECH CONFERENCE! 🚀

⏳ Only a few days to go until we bring together leading minds in Education, AI, Innovation, and Learning Technology!

Get ready to be inspired by an exceptional line-up of presenters who are shaping the future of education and workplace learning. From AI-powered curriculum design, ethical AI in assessment, inclusive digital learning, gamification, and learning analytics, this conference is packed with insights you cannot afford to miss!

🌟 MEET OUR INCREDIBLE PRESENTERS & THEIR BIOS 🌟

⚡ This is more than a conference — it’s a glimpse into the future of learning. Whether you are an educator, facilitator, assessor, training provider, EdTech enthusiast, or institutional leader, this event is designed to equip you with practical tools and future-focused strategies.

⏰ The countdown is ON! Don’t miss your opportunity to learn from leading experts and innovators in the field.

📢 The Programme is Here!

We are excited to officially share the APPETD ED-TECH Conference 2026 Programme! 🤖📚

Get ready for two dynamic days of insightful discussions, innovative ideas, and practical learning as we explore the future of Education, Technology, and Artificial Intelligence.

From AI in curriculum design, ethical AI practices, and AI teaching assistants, to neurodiverse learning, micro-skills, and gamification in learning — this year’s programme is packed with thought-provoking plenaries and engaging breakaway sessions led by leading experts in education and industry.

📅 10 – 11 June 2026
📍 Eduvos Bedfordview Campus
📌 01 Osborne Lane, Bedfordview, Johannesburg

Take a look at the programme and start planning the sessions you don’t want to miss! 👀

We look forward to welcoming you for an inspiring and future-focused conference experience.

The Future of Education Starts Here!

Are you ready to transform the way you facilitate, assess, and deliver learning?

Join education leaders, facilitators, trainers, and innovators at the APPETD 2-Day Ed-Tech Conference 2026, where we explore how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies are reshaping education and skills development.

📅 10 – 11 June 2026
📍 Eduvos Bedfordview Campus, 1 Osborne LaneBedfordview, Johannesburg, 2008
💻 Virtual and In-Person attendance available

✨ Discover practical AI tools for education
✨ Learn from industry experts and thought leaders
✨ Network with professionals driving innovation in learning and development
✨ Gain insights that will help you stay ahead in a rapidly evolving educational landscape

Whether you're an educator, trainer, assessor, learning designer, or education leader, this conference is designed to equip you with the knowledge and strategies needed for the future of learning.

🎟️ Secure your seat today!

Register: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=zHTPi8UqT02pd7tRxbRQf0ZbBmUaUqpOkn4437td34NUREdSNDNZREhFS1U2NEhUVDhTVEE0R0RQOS4u

Thank you to everyone who joined our APPETD Online Workshop on 28 May 2026: Financial Sustainability and Risk Management for Private Institutions.

We extend our gratitude to Professor HB Klopper for an insightful and practical presentation, and to all attendees for your active participation and engagement.

We hope the session provided valuable tools and strategies to support the long-term success, financial resilience, and sustainability of your institutions.

🚨 Reminder: Secure Your Spot for the Upcoming APPETD Online Workshop! 🚨

Join us for an insightful and engaging session on Financial Sustainability and Risk Management for Private Institutions presented by Professor HB Klopper.

📅 Date: 28 May 2026
⏰ Time: 09h00 – 11h00
💻 Online Workshop

💡 Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights from an experienced expert and engage in meaningful discussions relevant to the Private Education and Training sector.

🎟️Registration Fees: APPETD Members: R450 / Non-Members: R545

📌 RSVP: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=zHTPi8UqT02pd7tRxbRQf0ZbBmUaUqpOkn4437td34NUQ0FWNE9EN1Q0VkJBUzBaTjE3WEMzS1JBWS4u

🌟 THANK YOU FOR JOINING OUR APPETD ONLINE WORKSHOP! 🌟

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who joined us for our insightful session: “AI Unpacked: The Tools, the Trends and Your Certification Pathway” on the 19th of May 2026. Your participation, engagement, and thought-provoking discussions made the session a great success.

A special word of appreciation goes to our incredible presenters, Jade Atkinson and Tumelo Mothuli from Foster-Melliar, for sharing their expertise, valuable insights, and practical knowledge on the evolving world of Artificial Intelligence. From exploring leading AI tools to unpacking trends shaping education and the workplace, your contribution made this an impactful and meaningful learning experience.

We look forward to welcoming you to our upcoming APPETD events and continuing this journey of learning and innovation together. 🚀

AI Can Write Fluently — But Can It Be Trusted?

Artificial intelligence has transformed academic writing more quickly than most universities anticipated. Students, researchers, and professionals are increasingly using generative AI tools to summarise articles, structure arguments, improve grammar, generate ideas, and even draft entire sections of academic work.

The productivity gains are undeniable. Yet beneath the fluency and sophistication of AI-generated text lies a growing concern that higher education can no longer ignore: epistemic reliability.

Large language models such as ChatGPT do not “know” information in the human sense. They do not reason through evidence, verify sources, or assess truth claims. Instead, these systems generate responses by predicting the most statistically likely sequence of words, based on patterns learned from massive datasets. As Bender et al. (2021) argue, these models rely on probabilistic language generation rather than genuine understanding.

This distinction is critically important in academic contexts. One of the most concerning phenomena associated with generative AI is the emergence of what researchers call “hallucinations”, outputs that appear convincing and authoritative yet contain fabricated references, inaccurate claims, distorted summaries, or entirely false information. Ji et al. (2023) identify hallucinations as one of the central epistemic risks of natural language generation systems because the fluency of the language often conceals the unreliability of the content.

In practice, this means a student may receive a perfectly written paragraph with references that do not exist. A researcher may encounter a plausible explanation that subtly misrepresents a theory. An academic article may contain polished but factually incorrect statements that are difficult to detect without careful verification.

The challenge is therefore no longer simply about plagiarism or academic misconduct. It concerns the evolving nature of authorship and responsibility in an AI-mediated knowledge environment. Traditionally, academic writing required the author to gather evidence, synthesise information, evaluate competing perspectives, and construct arguments grounded in verified sources. AI is changing this process fundamentally. The writer increasingly becomes an evaluator of machine-generated knowledge rather than the sole producer of text. In effect, the academic writer must now act as both author and epistemic gatekeeper.

This shift places far greater emphasis on evaluative judgement, critical thinking, and source verification. The ability to question outputs, validate evidence, detect inconsistencies, and critically assess AI-generated claims may become more important than the mechanical production of text.

Importantly, this does not mean AI should be rejected from higher education. Generative AI offers significant opportunities for personalised learning, writing support, multilingual assistance, and research productivity. However, integrating it into academic environments requires a parallel strengthening of AI literacy and epistemic awareness.

The future of academic integrity may therefore depend less on preventing AI use and more on teaching students and researchers to interrogate AI-generated knowledge responsibly. In a world where machines can produce fluent language instantly, the true value of higher education may increasingly lie in the human capacity to evaluate what is true.

Refer list
Bender, E.M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A. and Shmitchell, S. (2021) ‘On the dangers of stochastic parrots: Can language models be too big?’, in Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’21). New York: ACM, pp. 610–623. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922
Farquhar, S., Kossen, J., Kuhn, L., Gal, Y. and Rainforth, T. (2024) ‘Detecting hallucinations in large language models using semantic entropy’, Nature, 630, pp. 625–630. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07421-0
Ji, Z., Lee, N., Frieske, R., Yu, T., Su, D., Xu, Y., Ishii, E., Bang, Y., Madotto, A. and Fung, P. (2023) ‘Survey of hallucination in natural language generation’, ACM Computing Surveys, 55(12), pp. 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1145/3571730

By Wynand Goosen - Appetd Board Member