Unisa students take lead honours at HEQAF Student Paper Presentation Competition for 2026

Three students from the University of South Africa (Unisa) have achieved notable results at the 2026 Higher Education Quality Assurance Forum (HEQAF) Student Paper Presentation Competition, bringing student research and perspectives into important discussions about the future of higher education.

The competition was held at the Regent Hotel in East London and brought together students, academics, quality assurance professionals and other stakeholders from across the higher education sector. Unisa students took the overall first position as well as a shared second place, highlighting the range of research topics emerging from student experiences.

Sanelisiwe Miya was named the overall winner for her research paper, The Influence of AI Tools in Student Learning and Assessment: A Call for Relooking Academic Integrity. Her work focused on the growing use of artificial intelligence in education and the questions it raises around learning, assessment and academic integrity.

Miya’s achievement is particularly relevant as universities continue to consider how artificial intelligence should be addressed in teaching and assessment. Rather than treating technology simply as a challenge, her research placed attention on the need to reconsider how academic integrity can be maintained while students and institutions navigate rapidly developing AI tools.

Speaking about the achievement, Miya highlighted the value of having an opportunity to engage with people working in higher education and to develop her research interests further.

Two Unisa students share second place

The competition also produced a shared second-place result for Nomfundo Muthwa and Lesedi Mahutse, both of whom represented Unisa with research addressing different aspects of the student experience.

Muthwa presented a paper titled Rejection as a Catalyst for Growth: Redirecting Academic Choices for Enhanced Learning Experiences. Her research considered issues surrounding access to post-school education and the way students experience academic decisions and university systems.

Mahutse’s paper, Integrating Peer Learning into Quality Assurance Systems: Challenges and Opportunities, examined the potential role of peer learning in institutional quality assurance.

The three papers demonstrate how students can contribute more than personal feedback about university services. Their experiences can also become the starting point for research that identifies challenges and explores possible approaches to improving higher education.

The official Unisa report on the competition provides further details about the three students and their presentations. Read the official Unisa report

A stronger role for the student voice

The 2026 HEQAF forum was held under the theme “Transforming Higher Education for Quality, Equity, and Student Success in the Era of Disruptive Technologies and Artificial Intelligence.”

Discussions at the forum considered how higher education institutions are responding to digitalisation and artificial intelligence, while also looking at quality assurance, teaching, learning, assessment and governance.

The programme included keynote presentations, research papers, panel discussions and roundtable sessions. Issues relating to equity and social justice were also part of the wider discussions.

For students, platforms such as the HEQAF Student Paper Presentation Competition create an opportunity to move from simply describing their university experiences to investigating those experiences through research.

The competition is connected to the Student Engagement in Quality Assurance and Student Support (SEQASS) project, which has provided opportunities for students to participate in HEQAF since 2024. Through mentorship and academic support, students have been encouraged to develop their experiences into research papers that can contribute to wider conversations about higher education.

HEQAF itself has developed through collaboration between universities and higher education stakeholders. The forum provides a space where academics, quality assurance practitioners, administrators, researchers and students can exchange ideas about the development of higher education.

For Unisa, the 2026 competition results place student research at the centre of that conversation. Miya’s first-place achievement, together with Muthwa and Mahutse’s shared second position, shows the different questions students are bringing into discussions about academic integrity, access, learning and institutional quality.

The achievement is therefore about more than competition results. It also demonstrates the value of giving students meaningful opportunities to research the issues affecting their education and to present their ideas alongside established voices in the higher education sector.

Source: University of South Africa (Unisa)
Author: Karabo Ntswaki
Updated: September 2026