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LT Conference

Learning and Teaching Conference 2022 – My conference experience by Helen Spittle

17 August 2022
Charlotte Tinnuche

Charlotte Tinnuche

As the Director of the Learning and Teaching Academy, I was thrilled to see colleagues and students share their experiences and case studies with us at this years’ Learning and Teaching Conference. The atmosphere was great and it felt like attendees thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

The 2022 conference was a chance for us to come together and focus on ‘Student success: what does the future of Higher Education look like for our students?’. It was great to see over 200 of you attend across the two days, in-person and online.

Thank you

I would like to thank you all for your active contributions, discussions, and engagement over the course of the event. I would also like to thank all presenters and workshop hosts for offering a wide range of excellent learning opportunities. It was great to reflect on the breadth of excellent practice examples at the university.

Keynote: ‘Student Voice: Engagement with and beyond the metrics’

The stories, Pecha Kuchas, workshops, Q&A sessions ran smoothly and we were pleased to welcome Camille Kandiko Howson from Imperial College London to deliver a keynote on ‘Student Voice: ‘Engagement with and beyond the metrics’.

The keynote looked at student feedback data beyond the metrics, looking at student feedback in different ways and using data we already have, to ask more intelligent questions of students, asking questions based on what we already know rather than the usual ‘tell us what we can do better’.

Our own Student Voice Project includes implementation of mid-module feedback from students, and we have been considering the use of tools such as Mentimeter at the end of a lecture, with staff either responding immediately to student comments, or following up in the Virtual Learning Environment afterwards, as Camille mentions during her talk. You can see our recording on what’s happening with Student Voice at Cardiff University and where we are going.

Camille highlighted the phrase ‘working across boundaries’, meaning to not sit in our professional silos. The talk helped me reflect on some of the opportunities ahead for us at Cardiff University. As an academy and the Education and Student Experience Portfolio, we’re challenging traditional boundaries  – bringing together Professional Services, academic and project staff as equals to design support and solutions and to address some of the challenges around student engagement . We’ll be running a series of projects to enhance student voice at Cardiff University, which will include the introduction of an overall Student Voice Framework, a focus on closing the feedback loop from module through to University-wide themes, and a Students’ Union Representatives review.

We’re looking forward to seeing what will come out of our Education and Student Experience Portfolio over the next few months.

Highlights

The Learning and Teaching Conference focussed on a number of current themes:

  • engaging with the student voice
  • effective assessments
  • inclusive and accessible approaches to learning and teaching
  • learning community and cohort identity
  • engaging with students online

Dr Annabel Cartwright and Dr Richard James Lewis shared a fantastic story on ‘Video assignments – an opportunity for fun and creativity as part of your course‘, allowing students to be creative and to increase their communication skills by demonstrating videos as part of their assignments.

The online workshop by Dr Jo Smedley on ‘Progressing Senior Fellowship‘ was beneficial for  understanding more about leadership and management perspectives. One of our Professional Services staff said:  ”this session was excellent and it’s made me feel more confident I can do it”.

Congratulations again to those who have been awarded their fellowships:

Upcoming events

We are hosting a range of Continuing Professional Development workshops over the summer. If you’d like to attend, make sure you book your place. You can view the list of events and access booking information on our learning and teaching events page.

At the end of summer, we will be launching our CPD programme for the autumn semester. This will be an opportunity for colleagues to continue to share good practice. Let us know what you’d like us to include.

If you’d like to contribute to our seminar series throughout the academic year and to share your good practice, keep a look out for more information later this summer.

 

Thank you again for attending and contributing to another successful conference, I’ll look forward to our 2023 conference themes!