4th & 5th Sept brought together the University of Salford’s learning and teaching community for our second in-person Festival of Learning and Teaching. Over 130 colleagues representing each of our four Schools and a range of professional services explored the notion of being an authentic practitioner in the context of our three sub-themes: “practice”, “identity”, and “community”.
The festival comprised three keynote presentations, 26 colleague presentations, workshops, and panel discussions, and 6 poster presentations. For our keynotes, in the morning Dr Emily Mcintosh (Director of Student Success) University of the West of Scotland talked us through her approach to Early Intervention, Integrated Practice and Authentic Approaches to Enabling Student Success. In the afternoon Tyrone Messiah, Head of technical Services at Staffordshire University, shared a fantastic discussion on the holistic learning landscape and the value of our professional services teams within learning and teaching. For our second days keynote, Salford PhD graduate Dr Gary Kerr, now Associate Professor in Festival & Event Management at Edinburgh Napier University, shared his personal journey in balancing the multiple roles of being an authentic practitioner.
Beyond our keynotes, session highlights included SBS’s “daring classrooms”, authentic story telling in genomics, the impact of podcasting on engagement, recent promotions to L&T Reader and Chair sharing their experiences, and an outstanding presentation on the philosophy of Ubuntu. Comments from Staff included “What a positive start to the new academic year”, Dr Sara Namvar (SEE). Veronica Newton, (SHS) shared key highlights to be… ‘networking, inspirational stories from other schools, head space to think creatively’, and shared she will be disseminating her learning ‘To staff team meeting this week’. Sam Grogan commented on the commitment dedication, talent, excellence and the showcase of the distance travelled.