The conference this year took place on Wednesday 7 September 2016.
Delegates at this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference explored ways in which staff and students can be meaningfully engaged in the co-construction of excellent teaching and learning.
A key recurring question was whether the phrase ‘teaching excellence’ is a good way to describe what we, as educators, should be striving for. One clear response given in the afternoon keynote and reinforced in discussions at the plenary was that an ethos of partnership between students and staff at all levels should be the focus:
“When we think about what partnership can produce we see that it can be between individual staff and students, collections of students and fewer staff, as in an academic course, collections of staff and students as in project teams, or the students’ union and the institutional leadership.” (Sayed Alkadiri, Former Vice-President of the Students’ Union, Middlesex University)
Other highlights included the morning keynote which pitched some of the proposed metrics for ‘excellence’ against the current ambiguity of how the ‘Teaching Excellence Framework’ will operate beyond the next academic year.
Take a look at the first keynote of the day below and explore other post-conference resources including video recordings and session summaries available from the 'Post-conference resource' link at the top of the site.