Lancaster Education Conference

Each summer Lancaster University and its partners host an Education Conference. This year the conference will be held on Wednesday 3rd and Thursday 4th July 2024, on Bailrigg Campus and online.

Education Conference 2024

Empowering Education: Navigating the Landscape of Meaningful Student Engagement

Registration is now open! Please register for the Lancaster University Education Conference using the links below:

Education Conference Logo

Conference aims

The Lancaster Education Conference aims to provide a welcoming interdisciplinary space, which specifically aims to:

  • Host an inclusive and engaging event, in which colleagues share teaching and learning experiences, good practices, alongside research and scholarship findings;
  • Inspire exploration, development and creativity in teaching, learning and education through new knowledge and ideas from a broad range of international speakers, presentations and interactive workshops;
  • Deliberately support and host interesting and constructive discussions, which leads directly to collegial collaboration and learning between Lancaster Partner colleagues;
  • Close the geographical, cultural and political gap between partner colleagues building long term working relationships and initiatives.

Keynote Speaker

Professor Radka Newton
Professor Radka Newton

Professor Radka Newton

Radka’s personal experience of being an international student contributed to her professional calling to ensure that as educators we create challenging yet attainable education environments. As a continuous improvement and service excellence scholar, she has grown a significant expertise in combining executive coaching, organisation change practice and service design. Radka is a Personal Chair in Management Education and Innovation and a co-founder of the Service Design in Education network.

Keynote Title: Tom’s Christmas Trifle

When we are designing our courses or programmes, we often think mostly about our own knowledge, what we want to convey to the learners, what we feel is important. As conscientious educators we do consider the people we are designing for, especially if we have absorbed the dominant rhetoric of student-centredness. What, though, is this consideration based on and how do we keep these interests and insights front and centre when we are developing our educational practices? Join me in exploring the invisible life of students, their dreams and fears, hopes and frustrations. Let me open your hearts and your minds to better understanding our students that leads to better educational decisions.

Yemi Gbajobi
Yemi Gbajobi

Yemi Gbajobi

With a career spanning almost 20 years in higher education and student engagement, Yemi Gbajobi (she/her) is currently the Chief Executive of the Arts Students' Union at the University of the Arts London. She has also held roles at the London School of Economics(LSE), City, University of London and London South Bank and student officer roles at Brunel University and the National Union of Students (NUS). She is also a Rugby Football Union (RFU) Council member and a Trustee of the Association of College Unions International (ACUI).

Keynote Title: Rethinking student engagement for the social media generation

The way students communicate continues to change, but universities typically use traditional methods of communicating with and engaging with students. This session will challenge attendees to rethink their understanding of and engagement with students' voices to ensure that their feedback is at the heart of the academic experience.

Call for Contributions

Tab Content: Abstract Submissions

The overall theme of the conference is meaningful student engagement: the ‘fun, enjoyable, immersive, stimulating’ aspect to learning, rather than just attendance. We seek contributions from across the Lancaster community to share your practice of enhancing learning with engaging activities and tasks.

The deadline for abstract submissions was Wednesday 10th April 2024. For any enquiries, please contact us at ceda@lancaster.ac.uk

Tab Content: Subthemes

Student Voices

What are your students telling you about engagement? Have you used their feedback to try a different approach and was it successful? Do you have an interesting approach to collecting feedback from your students? What is the impact?

Creative Pedagogy

Are you utilising a creative approach to your teaching: such as personalised learning, gamification or active learning? Do you cocreate curriculum with your students or use student-led classroom activities? If these can be used across disciplines, we like to hear about them.

Engagement in Assessment

This subtheme covers all aspects of the assessment process: formative/summative, submission and feedback, using AI, microcredentials and alternative assessment formats. Are you using an Assessment as Learning approach that embeds assessment through the learning journey?

Peer learning

This subtheme includes groupwork, learning sets and all types of problem-based learning. If you have key techniques that you use with your students to make this type of learning successful, then please consider sharing this at the conference.

Culturally responsive/inclusive engagement

This subtheme looks at engagement activities for all students. Have you decolonised your teaching? Do you consider the diversity of your students when planning activities? Are there particular considerations that you need to make? What has worked or what has been less successful?

Outside the classroom

This subtheme encompasses anything that is outside of the formal teaching space. Have you used 'walkshops', field trips, work-based learning or utilised the green/urban space of your campus? Was it successful? Could your example be used across disciplines?

Tab Content: Presentation Formats

This year we are doing things a little differently. We have 3 alternative formats:

10 minutes (5 min presentation, 5 min discussion)

Lightning Talks – these will be ‘one-slide’ presentations based around a successful example from your practice. What tool or technique have you tried with your students that really engaged them? Can the technique be used across disciplines and appeal to the wider university community?

30 minutes (20 min presentation, 10 min discussion)

This format allows more time for presentation and discussion. These should be evidence-informed, using both student feedback and underpinning literature.

60 minute symposium (45 min presentation, 15 min discussion)

This longer format allows for collaboration with other presenters. You may have similar ideas across disciplines or using a team-based programme approach to student engagement. You may want to bring in students to give their perspective. Presentations in this format need to be evidence-informed, from your own practice and the sector.

Alternatively, this format could be used for an interactive workshop.

Conference recordings

For access to conference information and recordings please click on the links below