By Sarah Honeychurch
The 19th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference took place this year over two days – on campus on Monday 30th March in the James McCune Smith Learning Hub (JMS) and online on Wednesday 1st April over Zoom. This year the theme was Inclusive Education in a Changing Environment, with sub-themes chosen to align with L&T Strategy Workstreams and institutional priorities. Full details are available on the conference web pages.
Day One was fully booked and attended by about 250 people. It began with an introduction by Moira Fischbacher-Smith, VP Learning and Teaching and Ayush Garg, SRC VP Education, who talked about the importance of designing inclusive approaches to learning and teaching with and not just for our students and ensuring that the diversity of voices across our student body are heard. As well as the challenges that HE faces in doing this, they also shared some of the recent successes at UofG – including the development of ‘sticky’ spaces such as JMS to give students a place to dwell and study outwith their classes, and the collaborative work with the SRC on the Student Voice Framework. This was followed by a key note by Dr Sam Ellis, Head of Undergraduate Music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, who gave an inspiring talk entitled “The Discipline of Enough: rethinking inclusion through pedagogical restraint”. Sam talked about how genuine inclusion depends on clarity, focus and the courage to leave things out and how, through using restraint in the everyday decisions they make, educators can help to reduce cognitive overload and support diverse learners by modelling sustainable professional behaviour. Both of these talks were recorded and uploaded to YouTube.
Delegates then had a rich choice of ten workshops to choose from in two parallel sessions, one before and one after lunch. These were designed and facilitated by nearly fifty colleagues from across the institution on a range of topics aligned to the conference theme and sub-themes. We were also delighted that Andy Schofield, our Principal, found time to come along and chat to attendees over lunch. The day closed with a panel on the conference theme, chaired by Wendy Anderson, AVP L&T. Members of this panel were Ayush Garg from the SRC; Clare Parks from STEP (Scotland’s Tertiary Enhancement Programme); Nic Kipar from Academic Development; Sam Ellis from Royal Conservatoire of Scotland; and Stephany Biello, who is Dean of Learning and Teaching in the College of Science and Engineering.
We have set up a SharePoint folder to collate resources from the day, and colleagues are also continuing to develop existing resources on our Learning and Teaching web pages. In particular, following the Embedding Employability session – and in response to staff feedback – new resources have been added to the Embedding Employability Framework webpages. These include a visual of the Experiential Learning Continuum and additional case studies showcasing how academic staff use experiential learning across the university.
Day Two had nearly 300 registered, and also began with an introduction by Moira Fischbacher-Smith, VP Learning and Teaching and Ayush Garg, SRC VP Education on the conference theme which was attended by about 150 online delegates. After the welcome the day was organized onto eight parallel sessions, two for each conference sub-theme, with two parallel Zoom rooms running throughout the day. In total there were 24 pre-recorded presentation and over 80 presenters listed on the conference web pages.
Planning for 2027 is now underway – watch this space to see what we have planned for next year to celebrate the 20th year of the conference!