CTIS at the Student Education Conference 2023
The new year and new term got off to a great start for CTIS as we go the opportunity to attend this year's Student Education Conference. The theme this year was 'A Curriculum for the Future – Rising to Grand Challenges' which speaks so well to the focus of the Centre to strengthen pedagogical approaches to the Politics of Global Challenges. CTIS members both attended and contributed to the programme. Anna Grimaldi and Simon Rofe detailed their work on Thinking Inside the Box and their exciting plans for the future to find ways to build this into the curriculum. Madeleine Le Bourdon and Louise Pears gave a snap session on their work on the place of social media in informal learning and the pedagogic opportunities social media might present for teaching on grand challenges and deepening student's digital literacy.
There have also been some great fringe events taking place all over this campus this week, including a faculty session where we got to share with and learn from colleagues across the faculty. It is great to part of such a committed, knowledgeable and ambitious teaching community at the university. Here CTIS member's give their reflections from the conference
Alex Meakin
Highlight: the student panel on the reverse mentoring scheme. Incredibly moving testimony from students who identify as under-represented, showing the incredible power of education (and the amazing work of the Lifelong Learning Centre)
Things I’ll do differently: think more about how my teaching and personal tutor relationships can help instil a sense of belonging for our students, based on the excellent talk by Edward Venn, which explored what ‘belonging’ means in practice.
Victoria Honeyman
Highpoint: Keynote from Mary Richardson. It felt as if Mary was staring into our souls and exposing all our deepest, darkest thoughts about our own time as students and the stress we felt undertaking assessment.
Take away: The five minute ‘bell’ sessions were fantastic for finding out about what is happening across the university and the innovative ways people are thinking about teaching.
Madeleine Le Bourdon
Highlight: the snap session from Dr Nick Cartwright on the impact of race and gender in seminar discussions really evidenced the work we need to do to address race in the classroom.
Thing I'll do differently: Professor Mary Richardson's keynote raised the problems with the over emphasis on assessment and I want to build in reflections to first year modules on the value of education beyond grades.
Simon Rofe
Highlight: Dave Lewis sessions on what 'capstones' could be at U of L, and Kenny McDowall's, support, because it deconstructed the idea of not only what the 'final' assessment could be, and therefore what the learning looks like: 'assessment for learning' in essence.
Thing I'll do differently: engage with more colleagues across the breadth and depth of the T&L community at Leeds.
Takeaway: the value of reflection in engaging students.
Our thanks go to the LITE conference team for putting on such a great event, an in particular for showing how a hybrid conference can be a success (see David Riley's comments on how to replicate this here). For those who want to read more about some of the themes and presentations can we direct you to the LITE blog
Happy New Year!