Mr Richard McInnes

Manager, Educational Design

Teaching and Learning Innovation

Academic


My research engages with higher education as a site of tension between values and systems, asking how curriculum and teaching practices can remain purposeful within increasingly technologised, corporatised, and neo-liberal environments.

I publish across curriculum design, educational technology, and institutional change, examining how contemporary shifts in higher education reshape pedagogy, academic work, and institutional priorities. A central concern of this work is the relationship between pedagogy and power, including how curriculum reflects and reproduces broader social, cultural, and political dynamics, and what this means for questions of equity, knowledge, and purpose. This draws on a critical theoretical lens that shapes how I approach both research and practice.

Practically, this work focuses on how educational development is enacted within complex institutional contexts, and what it takes to sustain values-led praxis within them. I am particularly interested in how practitioners exercise meaningful agency where competing priorities, systems, and constraints are ever present, and in developing approaches that are both critically grounded and practically useful for more purposeful, equitable, and sustainable teaching and learning in higher education.

Date Position Institution name
2022 - ongoing Manager, Educational Design University of Adelaide
2019 - 2019 Online Tutor University of South Australia
2016 - 2022 Online Educational Designer University of South Australia

Date Title Institution name Country
Bachelor of Science with Honours in Environmental Geography and Professional Education (Secondary) University of Stirling Scotland
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Higher Education Academy United Kingdom
Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Indigenous Knowledges) Higher Education Academy United Kingdom

Year Citation
2026 Mcinnes, R., (Ruby) Nguyen, N. N., Rathnappulige, S., Marek, S., Searson, D. J., & Waterland, A. (2026). Beyond guesstimating: Calculating student workload in fully online micro-credentials. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 42(1), 95-113.
DOI
2025 McInnes, R. (2025). A subversive leadership framework for values-led educational development. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 1-15.
DOI
2024 McInnes, R., Hobson, J., Johnson, K., Cramp, J., Aitchison, C., & Baldock, K. (2024). Online course quality evaluation instruments: a scoping review. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, online(2), 1-21.
DOI Scopus5 WoS2
2023 Nagy, S., McInnes, R., & Airey, L. (2023). GEN-AI: A TRANSFORMATIVE PARTNER IN COLLABORATIVE COURSEDEVELOPMENT. International Journal on Innovations in Online Education, 7(2), 57-73.
DOI
2021 McInnes, R., Cramp, J., & Aitchison, C. (2021). Evaluating technologies for communicating mathematical and scientific reasoning in fully online engineering courses: a technology choice framework. International Journal on Innovations in Online Education, 5(2), 73-91.
DOI
2020 McInnes, R., Aitchison, C., & Sloot, B. (2020). Building online degrees quickly: academic experiences and institutional benefits. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 17(5), 1-19.
Scopus7 WoS4
2019 McInnis, R. (2019). Developing multimedia collaboratively: Practical approaches for large-scale online curriculum development. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 16(1).
Scopus7
- McInnes, R., & Airey, L. (2025). Prompting, privilege, and pedagogy. ASCILITE Publications, 297-302.
DOI

Year Citation
2026 McInnes, R., Nguyen, R. -N., Rathnappulige, S., Marek, S., Searson, D. J., Waterland, A., & Honson, A. (2026). A research-based student workload calculator.

Year Citation
2025 McInnes, R. (2025). Surveillance, Tyranny, and Technocratic Colonialism: A Critical Interrogation of Gen-AI Solutionism in Higher Education Curriculum.
DOI
2025 McInnes, R. (2025). Surveillance, Tyranny, and Technocratic Colonialism: A Critical Interrogation of Gen-AI Solutionism in Higher Education Curriculum.
DOI

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