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CTIS at the Student Education Conference 2023

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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 student panel on reverse mentoring, highlighting the importance of honoring the diversity in students' experience and ensure we are co-creating spaces where students feel they belong and can flourish.
Thing I'll do differently: Using digital forums inside and outside the classroom. Many presentations demonstrated the likes of Slack and Discord make sharing ideas more accessible and help build community.
Takeaway: From Dr Nadine Cavigioli- replacing the goal to create 'safe spaces' to 'spaces where students can be courageous'. We must acknowledge the diversity in student experiences both within and outside University life.
Louise Pears

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!