Conference Programme
| 08.30 – 09.00 | Virtual coffee and set up |
09.00 – 12.00 Morning Session
| 09.00 – 09.15 | Welcome and Introduction – BLTEC committee |
| Opening – Professor Anne-Marie Kilday, Pro Vice-Chancellor Student and Staff Experience | |
| 09.15 – 10.10 | Morning Keynote |
| 10.10 – 10.30 | Morning virtual coffee break |
| 10.30 – 12.00 | Morning events |
| 12.00 – 12.45 | Lunch Break |
Morning keynote
From transaction to partnership: re-energising curriculum co-creation through student-staff partnership
Dr. Tai Peseta and student team (Alex Donoghue, Sameer Hifazat, Shivani Suresh & Jen Alford), 21C Transforming Curriculum, Learning Futures, Western Sydney University, Australia
Speakers’ Biography »As universities across the globe scramble to reimagine themselves (and their curriculum provision) for a (post) COVID-19 world, it will be important for scholars, teachers and educators to both establish, and hang on to practices that enable students and staff to work collectively, authentically, and in partnership and solidarity with one another. While the UK’s sector-wide commitment to the student voice via national experience surveys, student representation, and participation in quality assurance and enhancement activities is clearly evident through strong partnerships with student unions, in Australia, similar efforts exist but are far less coherent at sector-level. Where we are, at Western Sydney University, the focus of our partnership activity together through the 21C project is less about the important work of galvanizing a response to students’ voices, and more about how curricula for a 21st century emerges as an act of learning and co-creation between students and staff.
Animated by three concepts: first, Jeffrey J. Williams’s idea ‘teach the university’ (Williams, 2007); second, the idea of Partnership Pedagogy (Barrie & Pizzica, 2019) and third, Gina Hunter’s work on supporting students to use ethnography to study the university (Hunter, 2012; Hunter & Ableman, 2013), in this interactive presentation, we aim to share our processes and practices of collective curriculum-making and how these offer a powerful, puzzling and practical inquiry context for re-energising learning and teaching.
We share how we started (and the importance of institutional strategy and context); we provide examples of the different kinds of curricula we are making together (transdisciplinary sub-majors in five challenge areas: Future Thinkers, Global Citizens, Innovative Entrepreneurs, STEM+, Sustainability Advocates); we showcase a handful of the professional development programs we initiated to grow partnership, as well as the module we have co-created We Are The University: students co-creating change intended to ‘teach the university’ to students. In many ways, our work is still at the beginning stages and although our remit is to work across the university to build partnership capacity, we are keen to make space for imagining with you your first, or next, steps to curriculum partnership practice.
10.10 – 10.30 Morning virtual coffee break (take your coffee around the exhibition and come back for the morning sessions).
10.30 – 12.00 Option 1: Workshop
A Pedagogy for learning and teaching differently through critical management education
Workshop by: Professor David Knights and Dr Guy Huber, OBBS
This workshop will underline the processes of identity work in teaching from a critical management education (CME) perspective. What CME scholars seem to share within the perspective is a resistance to the status quo of power and social inequality and a concern to ‘plant the seed for challenging injustice’ (Dehler, 2009: 45). In today’s context of the coronavirus pandemic and the climate emergency, we have no alternative since it is not just our identities but our very lives that are threatened. Pedagogically, CME demands that we engage our students in the interpretation, contestability, and at times, even the production of knowledge and this workshop will highlight ways to do so.
10.30 – 11.15 Option 2: Special Interest Group
Staff-student partnerships at Brookes – Art of the Possible
Special Interest Group led by: Professor Jackie Potter (OCSLD) and Andrew Pedersen (Student Union)
This session is an opportunity to build upon the topics and ideas discussed in the Keynote by Dr. Tai Peseta with her student team surrounding staff-student partnerships. If you are interested in exploring the potential for growing staff-student partnerships at Brookes come along to this session to discuss, share and reimagine what partnership work could mean in different contexts across Brookes.
11.15 – 12.00 Option 2: Exhibition Room Guides
Guides and Networking in Exhibition Rooms
In these three 15 minute sessions, our exhibition room guides will introduce the exhibits on display in one of the virtual exhibition rooms and provide you with opportunities to discuss the themes and network with exhibitors, guides and other exhibition visitors. You will be encouraged to note down which exhibits you might revisit during the breaks and into the following week when the exhibition remains open. In the afternoon, there will be a similar session with guides to three different rooms in the exhibition.
12.00 – 12.45 Virtual lunch break
Take your lunch around the virtual exhibition and come back for the afternoon session.
12.45 – 16.00 Afternoon Session
| 12.45 – 13.40 | Afternoon keynote |
| 13.45 – 15.15 | Afternoon events |
| 15.15 – 15.30 | Virtual tea break |
| 15.30 – 15.50 | Staff and students: contribute to an exciting new staff-student e-zine |
| 15.50 – 16.00 | Closing remarks by BLTEC committee |
| Conference close- Professor Jackie Potter, Professor of HE Learning and Development, Head of Educational and Staff Development and Deputy Director of Human Resources |
Afternoon keynote
Advising re-imagined: building advising pedagogy in a post-Covid world
Dr Emily McIntosh, Middlesex University, UK
Speaker Biography »Abstract: This keynote aims to cover the following core themes:
- Exploring the alignment of advising and tutoring in a post-pandemic university.
- Establishing academic tutoring and advising as critical to student-centred pedagogical practice.
- Exploring the use of an integrated tutorial curriculum to align tutoring with other learning and teaching activities.
- Harnessing learning and engagement analytics and technology enabled tutoring for the greater good – an appreciative approach.
- Understanding how academic advising aligns with universal design for learning (UDL).
- Stating the case for the pivotal role of advising and tutoring in facilitating student success.
- Tutoring and advising in the blend – harnessing tutoring models during and post a global pandemic and integrating tutoring with a blended, flipped pedagogical approach.
13.45 – 15.15 Option 1: Workshop
Academic advising during Covid: What do we do when we can’t meet face to face?
Workshop by Cathy Malone, OCSLD
In this workshop colleagues will be paired for a structured conversation focusing on our experiences of Academic Advising during the last year. We’ll use the time to listen closely and act as critical friends with colleagues from across OBU. Mindful of ethical considerations and student privacy we’ll share our ideas on: How use of space and technology alters the experience of Academic Advising for tutor and tutee. And consider what practices we want to maintain and what remains challenging. Staff will be able to discover commonalities at level of principle and advising practice.
13.45 – 14.30 Option 2: Special Interest Group
Thinking space to talk about interdisciplinarity
Special Interest Group led by Lucy Turner, Faculty of Technology, Design & Environment.
This session is an effort to bring colleagues together and to create a space for them to think about the pedagogy of interdisciplinary teaching and to let them think about – what do we mean by interdisciplinary, what are the challenges to this approach to teaching, how can it enhance employability and how could we facilitate it at Oxford Brookes? And In order to spark deeper discussion on this topic this session will be facilitated by breakout rooms and Padlets to gather key comments.
14.30 – 15.15 Option 2: Exhibition Room Guides
Guides and Networking in Exhibition Rooms
In these three 15 minute sessions, our exhibition room guides will introduce the exhibits on display in one of the virtual exhibition rooms and provide you with opportunities to discuss the themes and network with exhibitors, guides and other exhibition visitors. You will be encouraged to note down which exhibits you might revisit during the breaks and into the following week when the exhibition remains open. In the afternoon, there will be a similar session with guides to three different rooms in the exhibition.
Final Thoughts
| 15.15 – 15.30 | Virtual tea break (take your afternoon tea and cake around the exhibition and come back for the final session). |
| 15.30 – 15.50 | Staff and students: share your questions on student engagement and contribute to an exciting new staff-student e-zine. Professor Jackie Potter and Kat Kwok, OCSLD |
| As we close the conference day, we would like to invite you to contribute to OCSLD’s new e-zine Teaching Insights, a staff-student publishing venture funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund which aims to be a source of practical ideas to create exceptional student experiences. The first issue on improving student engagement is being launched this July and we have a special opportunity for BLTEC participants to contribute. In this session, we will invite you to submit your questions on student engagement for our expert panel of staff and students in the e-zine’s Peer Review feature. We will also provide more information about the e-zine and other ways you can contribute. | |
| 15.50 – 16.00 | Closing remarks – BLTEC committee |
| Conference close- Professor Jackie Potter, Professor of HE Learning and Development, Head of Educational and Staff Development and Deputy Director of Human Resources |