3 July: The Advance HE Teaching and Learning Conference 2018 is underway. This morning Advance HE’s chief executive, Alison Johns, welcomed the first group of the 600 plus delegates who are attending the conference over the next three days.
The conference, “Teaching in the spotlight: learning from global communities” began with a keynote address delivered by Professor Christine Jarvis, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning), University of Huddersfield, “Growing Global Graduates: Teaching for a better world”.
Professor Jarvis challenged delegates to think about what it means to be a global graduate, proposing that it went far beyond developing students for employability in a global economy, to developing students who can “build the world, not just respond to it.” She argued that much of the current thinking around the global graduate was constraining, missing key components of global citizenship and social justice where graduates would be “agents of change, able to understand the complex issues of globalisation and work for a better world.” The ongoing challenge to academics, she proposed, was to try to connect more effectively with students, going beyond the constraints of a narrow curriculum, “making emotional and cognitive links with students’ lifeworld’s questions such as – “what have these social, artistic, scientific and technical issues got to do with me? Why should I know about them – how might they impact on my world?“
For UK universities, she suggested, the challenge was compounded by the relative narrowness of the curriculum, and the focus on subject specialism without enough regard for the wider social context or cross-disciplinary work.
Professor Jarvis concluded by leading a lively Q & A session on “how do we get all this into the curriculum?” and “do we need a progressive, mandatory, developmental CPD for all HE teachers to enable then to build the knowledge and skills they need?”
The three-day conference includes more than 300 sessions, including keynotes from John Gill, Editor, Times Higher Education, on Global Higher Education Trends- And why these matter at home; and Shai Reshef, President, University of the People speaking about The Education Revolution: How online learning will solve the future of higher education.
All the presentations from this year's Advance HE Teaching and Learning Conference will be available on the HEA website shortly.