Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Keynote Announcement

We are delighted to confirm our keynote for this year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference. Bookings for the conference are already open.

Dr Neil Currant will be joining us for an in-person keynote presentation and masterclass workshop on the second day of the conference, Wednesday 9 July.

Neil will be discussing the important role of compassionate assessment, belonging, and inclusive assessment practices.

In the workshop, colleagues will be given the opportunity to reflect on their own assessment practices and ways in which they could incorporate and adapt them based on Neil’s keynote. This work builds on the vital work being undertaken in Student Support Services.

Please see below for a speaker biography and links to selected works and projects:

Dr Neil Currant is a Senior Educational Developer at the University of Bedfordshire. He was previously Head of Educational Development at Oxford Brookes University and the Royal Veterinary College. Neil has been supporting teaching, learning and assessment practices in higher education for twenty years with expertise in inclusion and assessment.

Neil has been involved in JISC funded research projects on the use of learning technology, an Advance HE funded project on global citizenship, institutional research on awarding gaps and QAA funded projects on belonging and compassion.

Neil is a reviewer and accreditor for Advance HE. Neil co-founded the Compassionate Assessment Network in HE and is currently researching assessment practice related to compassion, the affective impact of feedback and ungrading.

Belonging research – Teaching Insights journal.

Rethinking assessment? Research into the affective impact of higher education grading

Belonging project – https://www.qaa.ac.uk/membership/collaborative-enhancement-projects/assessment/belonging-through-assessment-pipelines-of-compassion

Compassionate Assessment Project – https://www.qaa.ac.uk/membership/collaborative-enhancement-projects/assessment/compassionate-assessment-in-higher-education

We will be announcing further external speakers in due course.

Call for Proposals

Our Call for Proposals is still open, and closes on April 8. We welcome proposals that speak to the conference themes, but also those which showcase the excellent teaching practices taking place at Aberystwyth University.

Bookings Open

Bookings for the conference are already open. Please complete our online survey to book your place.

If you have any questions about the conference, please contact the conference organisers via elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Registration now open

Registration for the thirteenth annual Learning and Teaching conference is now open.

This year’s Learning and Teaching conference has the theme Innovative Pathways to Empowering Learners: Adapting, Engaging, and Thriving and will be taking place between Tuesday 8 and Thursday 10 July 2025.

You can register for the conference online.

Call for Proposals

Staff, postgraduate teaching assistants, and students are invited to submit proposals for the 13^th Annual Aberystwyth University Learning and Teaching Conference held 8-10 July 2025.

Submit and view the call for proposals online.

Please complete this form no later than 8 April 2025.

Mini Conference Keynote announcement: Dr Aranee Manoharan

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Inclusive Curriculum 2.0: Bridging Inclusion and Employability Aims through the Curriculum

We are delighted to confirm our keynote for our mini conference on Tuesday 8 April.

Dr Aranee Manoharan from Kings College London will be joining us.

Please see below for an overview of Aranee’s keynote and a biography. You can book your place for the mini conference online and we will be announcing the full programme in due course.

If you have got any questions regarding this event, please contact the conference organisers on elearning@aber.ac.uk.

In this keynote, Aranee will introduce an approach to inclusive curriculum design that supports all students to develop the knowledge, skills, and experiences required to successfully navigate the rigours of a VUCA 21^st century. The presentation will explore the key principles of inclusive curriculum development that supports student and graduate outcomes, before sharing how employability can be integrated effectively through subject teaching & learning – including using a programmatic approach to curriculum design and high impact pedagogies and assessments. The session will share a range of tools that Aranee has developed through her work with academic and professional services teams in this area; all of which can also be found in the QAA-funded toolkit for Inclusive Employability Development through the Curriculum that she led with colleagues at City University and University of London.

Dr Aranee Manoharan, PhD, SFHEA, FRSA

Aranee is Senior Associate Director for Careers & Employability at King’s College London. With experience across the areas of teaching, student experience, and educational development, as well as EDI and governance, she specialises in taking a whole student lifecycle approach to improving student outcomes. An Advance HE Senior Fellow, she specialises in inclusive approaches to curriculum design to support student and graduate outcomes and has significant experience working with academic teams to facilitate real-world learning, using high-impact pedagogies and assessments, delivered in collaboration with community and industry partners.

A committed advocate for equity and inclusion, Aranee serves on a number of advisory groups, including the Institute for Student Employers (ISE) EDI Working Group; Royal Society of Biology HUBS Awarding Gap Network; Advance HE’s Race Equality Charter Governance Committee; and as a Board Director for AGCAS, where she leads the social mobility, widening participation, and regional inequality portfolio. Aranee is also the Director of AM Coaching & Consulting, a consultancy that supports organisations to establish inclusive working, learning, and research cultures.

Call for Proposals: Learning and Teaching Conference 2025

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We are now inviting proposals for the 13^th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, Tuesday 8-Thursday 10 July 2025.

Submit and view the call for proposals online.

The theme for this year’s conference is:

Innovative Pathways to Empowering Learners: Adapting, Engaging, and Thriving

The main strands of this year’s conference are:

Adaptable assessment design
Student engagement and autonomous learning
Community building
Technologies to enhance learning
Online learning

Staff, postgraduate teaching assistants, and students are welcome to propose sessions on any topic relating to learning and teaching, especially those that focus on the incorporation and use of technology. Even if your suggestion doesn’t fit a particular strand, other topics are welcome.

We seek to encourage presenters to consider using alternative formats that reflect and suit the content of their sessions. As such, we are not specifying a standardised presentation format.

Please complete this form no later than 8 April 2025.

If you have any questions, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk.

13th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: Theme Announcement

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We are pleased to announce the theme of the 13th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, taking place between 8 and 10 July 2025.

The theme is: “Innovative Pathways to Empowering Learners: Adapting, Engaging, and Thriving”.

The conference will have the following strands:

Adaptable assessment design
Student engagement and autonomous learning
Community building
Technologies to enhance learning
Online learning

Each year, we speak to our stakeholder group and other members of the University to establish topics that colleagues will find useful.

The first strand of adaptable assessment design brings together a piece of work being undertaken by colleagues in Student Services, which foregrounds flexible approaches to assessment design, assessments with multiple formats, and authentic assessment design.

Student engagement and instilling autonomous learning remains to be a key challenge for colleagues. Under this strand, we’re interested in strategies for instilling autonomy in learning, ways in which learning can be scaffolded, and the embedding of skills for learning and the graduate workplace.

Our third strand of community building seeks to highlight the work of wellbeing in the curriculum and to consider more trauma-informed ways of working, how online learning communities are created, and the use of learning analytics. Central to all these themes is inclusive pedagogies.

Under the strand technologies to enhance learning we will be interested to hear about positive case studies and uses of incorporating AI into the classroom, advanced and exemplary uses of Blackboard Ultra, and good teaching practice in the digital age.

Our final strand speaks to online learning speaks to the work of the Aber Online Learning Project in partnership with HEP, transitioning on campus to online teaching, and engagement strategies for online learning.

We will be opening the Call for Proposals and conference booking shortly.

If you have got any questions, please contact the conference organisers on elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Mini Conference: Employability and the Inclusive Curriculum

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The Digital Education Group in partnership with the Careers Service are pleased to announce the theme for our next Mini Conference.

Building on the success of last year’s Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, we will be revisiting the topic of employability with the theme Employability and the Inclusive Curriculum.

The mini conference will take place online on the morning of Tuesday 8 April.

The full line up will be confirmed in due course but we are pleased to announce that the Careers Service will be launching their new toolkit for embedding employability in the curriculum.

Bookings for the event are already open. You can book your place online.

If you have any questions, please contact elearning@aber.ac.uk.

Save the Date: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit are excited to announce the date for the 13^th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference. The conference will be taking place between Tuesday 8 and Thursday 10 July 2025.

Look out for Calls for Proposals and the announcement of the conference theme. As usual, we will be updating our Learning and Teaching Conference Webpages and also our blog to keep you up-to-date with how things are progressing.

Mini Conference: Blackboard Exemplary Practice: Materials Available

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Happy New Year!

On Wednesday 18 December, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit hosted an online mini conference taking a look at Blackboard Exemplary Practice. With over 40 attendees, and 5 sessions, it was one of our biggest mini conferences.

The materials from the event are now available on our webpages.

We were delighted to welcome Carol Chatten from Edge Hill University and Robert Farmer from Northampton University to showcase their award-winning courses.

Carol’s course is designed for medical professionals completing their placements. Robert’s course introduced undergraduates to critical thinking skills. Both courses have been awarded Blackboard’s Exemplary Course Programme Award.

We were then joined by Dom Gore and Richard Gibbons from Anthology (Blackboard). They gave an overview of the new developments that are coming in Blackboard, as well as introducing attendees to the new AI Conversations tool. We have enabled AI Conversations and have updated our Blackboard AI Design Assistant training. Take a look at our blogpost for further information.

Finally, Law and Criminology’s Lauren Harvey, and School of Education’s Panna Karlinger gave tours of their exemplary courses. Both submitted applications to last year’s Exemplary Course Award. The deadline for 2025 is Friday 31 January 2025. Further information is available on our blogpost.

Online Mini Conference: Exemplary Blackboard Presence

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The Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit is pleased to announce its final event of the year.

On Wednesday 18 December (10:00-14:30), we will be hosting an online Mini Conference looking at Exemplary Blackboard Presence.

We’re delighted to be joined by two external presenters.

Carol Chatten is from the University of Edge Hill and will be showcasing their Medical and Education Course. This course recently won Blackboard’s ECP.
Robert Farmer from the University Northampton will be sharing their course on Critical Thinking which also won Blackboard’s ECP.

Also joining us to share their winning courses are School of Education’s Panna Karlinger and Law and Criminology’s Lauren Harvey. Both entered our internal Exemplary Course Award last year.

We’re hoping that this event will inspire attendees and give colleagues ideas as to how they can develop their courses ahead of Semester 2.

We’re also using this event as a springboard to start thinking about an enhanced Blackboard presence.

And finally, we’ll be sharing the latest AI Design Assistant tool that we’re looking to enable in January: AI Conversations. This builds on the other AI Design Assistant tools that we already have enabled in Blackboard.

Colleagues can book for this half day event via the online booking system and a Teams invitation will be sent out.

We hope that you can join us.

Do let us know if you have any questions (elearning@aber.ac.uk).

12th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference Materials Available

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Between the 10 and 12 September, the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit hosted the 12^th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.

The materials from the conference are now available on our webpages.

We would like to thank all of our contributors and attendees. The sessions were of such high quality.

We’re already heading into planning our 13^th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference which is scheduled to take place in July 2025 (date TBC).

We hope to see you at a forthcoming event.