Everyone’s worried about students developing AI skills, but is there enough attention paid to educators? It’s not just about teaching AI literacy, it’s about using AI capabilities to support curriculum and learning design, assessment, and teaching administration – and being able to use academic judgement on continuing to uphold academic quality and standards while doing so. This session will seek your views on how AI changes the academic quality environment and how best to support educators across higher education to use it in the most appropriate and impactful ways.
It might be a “new era of collaboration” in higher education but collaboration happens from skills not just will. Our expert panel will discuss some of the nuts and bolts of working together across institutional boundaries: how to build common purpose, manage collective delivery and manage all the big personalities involved.
Trust underpins a whole range of relationships in higher education: between leaders and staff, educators and students, and between institutional actors and communities and stakeholders outside the institution; as well as the relationship between higher education and the public. But sometimes it doesn’t – trust appears fragile, fragmented, or absent. Who can be trusted in higher education, and on what grounds?
Discussion sessions will take the form of a brief initial provocation followed by open debate and sharing of views from those attending.
Student support needs seem to be changing in inverse proportion to the amount of money sloshing around to throw at the problems. Layering more provision on top of what’s already there isn’t an option for most – it’s time to rethink how students are enabled to thrive. Our experts will share their evidence base and invite you to share your insight from your own knowledge and experience.
Discussion sessions will take the form of a brief initial provocation followed by open debate and sharing of views from those attending.
Our panellists aren’t in the business of changing just lightbulbs, they’re trying to roll out change across their whole institution. Tasked with developing digital skills and creativity through pedagogic change under the auspices of the Adobe Creative Campus programme, our panellists will talk through the theory and practicalities of moving whole-institution agendas forward and what it takes to inspire meaningful change.
As the UK Government launches the Local Innovation Partnership Fund and announces major changes to the Higher Education Innovation Fund, it is clear that universities are being asked to fundamentally sharpen their approach to driving economic growth. The Data City, Metro Dynamics and Favier Ltd have launched a new partnership to help universities answer the question: “what’s your university industrial strategy?”
In this interactive workshop, you’ll be able to see how institutions can access Real Time data to understand their innovation footprint by geography and by sector, before working with institutions to align this with 1) their future strategic direction across research, knowledge exchange, talent and capital development and 2) the economic priorities of both local, regional and national government. Using real-world examples from your universities, you’ll also be able to work through the process of identifying those “sweet-spots” where university economic intent matches local and national government priorities.
In this interactive unconference-style session, we’ll hear from a panel of research and evaluation experts from across the sector about what’s currently being explored, including emerging trends and evolving requirements. We’ll then break into group activities to consider: what are we curious about, and what remains poorly understood in higher education? Participants will be encouraged to think boldly about their own research agendas – anything goes, no holds barred. We’ll wrap up by reconvening for brief summaries from each group and reflecting on possible next steps.
They said it would never take off, but now radical collaboration is the hot topic of the moment. Yet despite the widespread interest in different ways of merging or otherwise combining institutions – to create economies of scale, and new offers to students and regions – there remain cultural, legal and structural barriers to making radical collaborations work. KPMG and Mills & Reeve have undertaken in-depth work on the strategic and legal implications of bringing HE institutions together – and in this session you’ll have the chance to think through the various options available, what opportunities and risks might emerge, and the implications for ways of working and student experience.
Imagine a world where universities could see and understand the whole picture, every interaction, every barrier, every bit of useful information and could use that insight to design learning, support, information systems and engage with students and colleagues in a way that actually works. This session seeks to understand what’s possible when institutions move beyond compliance and towards a truly data-driven culture. One where data isn’t just for those with “data” in their job title, but for all to use to enhance and make their work more efficient.
Join Clare Walsh and Martha Horler to look at where the sector is now when it comes to data capability, how we can utilise our existing strengths and to imagine what would be possible if higher education became fully data capable.
With AI reshaping the labour market, what skills and attributes should universities prioritise to future-proof graduates, and what is the value of a degree in an AI normalised world? Appealing to academic leaders, and digital strategy, careers and curriculum design professionals, this forward-looking session brings together labour market data, employer insights, curriculum innovation and the existential question for all universities.
Key questions include: What would universities look like if we were designing them in current times? What new forms of employer engagement and curriculum design are needed to keep pace with rapidly evolving labour markets? What are the implications on assessment and research at our institutions? What does employability mean in an AI-driven economy, and how should universities redefine their role in preparing students for it? How can institutions embed AI literacy and future-facing skills across all disciplines without reinforcing existing inequalities?