If you could get one inspiring speaker on innovation in educational design, who would it be? Considering ways of motivating Uni faculty staff to think about proposing and developing small, funded educational initiatives.

In case I miss you seeing you do you mean instructional design in other words typically at least an adult education you have subject matter experts and instructional designer the subject matter expert informs the content the instructional designer the curriculum and then finesse.

It could be anyone as long as they have a design sensibility and knowledge. Ideally, someone who can think across these discrete categories.

Just from my own personal clarification when you say design sensibility do you mean that literally or generally is it visual design web design or systems design or the design of the instructor intentions

I'm thinking of "design for learning" (see, e.g. journal.alt.ac.uk/index.php/… by @petergoodyear & @yandim). From this view, teachers, instructional designers, learning technologists and even students are designers, hopefully in collaboration.

Having a design sensibility is about intentionality, and clarity of purpose and rationale around how activities, materials and social groupings are configured to facilitate particular kinds of learning.