Enhancement Themes Conference 2010: Graduates for the 21st Century: Integrating the Enhancement Themes

Background:
As an important event in the Scottish higher education calendar, this year’s Enhancement Themes conference will provide a stimulating and interactive platform for staff and students to discuss and debate the enhancement of learning and teaching.

The conference, which is free to attend, takes place at the Edinburgh Conference Centre, Heriot-Watt University, on Tuesday 2 and Wednesday 3 March 2010, and is supported by the Scottish Higher Education Enhancement Committee (SHEEC).

As in previous years, a significant component of the conference will be a wide range of workshops and poster sessions, as well as series of plenary presentations from eminent speakers with particular perspectives on the current Enhancement Theme.

The focus of the conference this year will be the current Enhancement Theme, Graduates for the 21st Century: Integrating the Enhancement Themes.

Beginning its work in 2009, this Enhancement Theme is supported by a steering committee chaired by Professor Philip Winn of the University of Strathclyde, and includes representation from all Scottish higher education institutions (HEIs) and student representatives.

This Enhancement Theme provides an important opportunity for higher education institutions to consider how best the outcomes of the completed Enhancement Themes can be linked, integrated and used in different ways to engage, empower and enhance the development of effective learners and to support their achievement of graduate attributes.

Much of the work of this Enhancement Theme is taking place within Scottish HEIs, coordinated by institutional teams. These groups are undertaking programmes of work to consider graduate attributes and how completed Enhancement Themes can assist in providing opportunities for students to develop these.

To support HEIs, teams of facilitators have been appointed to refresh, update and integrate the outcomes of completed Enhancement Themes, and these teams will be contributing to the conference, running workshops and other activities.

Overarching the institutional work and the projects to integrate the earlier Enhancement Themes, there is a sector-wide symposium, which will run as a series of events over the course of this academic year and next. This will take the form of presentations and papers looking at the wider scope of learning and teaching in higher education. The plenary sessions of the conference will form part of this symposium series.

Conference programme:

The conference will run over two days with integration between the days.

Plenary sessions:
The programme includes speakers who will provide perspectives on graduate attributes from a number of viewpoints, from school education and the changes Curriculum for Excellence will bring, through how best to support students to succeed in higher education, to those of employers and the research environment. The purpose of these sessions is to stimulate debate considering the significance of these perspectives for teaching and learning in higher education.
The individual plenary sessions over the two days will be drawn together in a panel session on the afternoon of the second day.
Following last year’s success, the plenary sessions will be videoed and posted to this site after the event.

Workshops:
We know that workshops are an integral part of conference and for this year’s event a call to colleagues to submit proposals for workshops resulted in a very good response, reflected in the numerous and wide range of choices of sessions over the two days.
The aim of these sessions is to share practice (from within and outside Scotland) related to the topics of the Enhancement Themes.
As in previous years, there will be two workshop sessions each day. The focus will be on Graduates for the 21st Century: Integrating the Enhancement Themes, with many workshop abstracts demonstrating a connection between a number of Themes.
Project facilitators, who are working to update, refresh and integrate the work of already completed Enhancement Themes, will each run two workshops at the conference.

Posters:
Once again, poster presentations will be feature of this year’s conference, taking place after lunchtime each day.
Poster presentations will provide opportunities for practitioners to meet and share interesting and emerging practice. As with the workshop proposals, integration between Themes will be a feature of the posters this year, while not excluding examples of practice which focus on one particular Theme.
The poster display at the conference will comprise those accepted through the call for proposals along with a series of posters recently displayed at a number of Australian events, highlighting the work of the Australian National GAP (Graduate Attributes Project).

Stands and project bases:
Following on from last year’s success, tables will be provided for partner organisations. These stands will give opportunities to see the work of these organisations and to make contact with colleagues working within them.
As a new venture, the project facilitators will also have a working base in the circulation area, and will be available informally.

Conference dinner:
The conference dinner will take place on the evening of 2 March 2010.
As in previous years, this is being run on a cost recovery basis.

Booking:
Booking is now closed.

We hope to welcome you to the 2010 conference on 2 and 3 March, and that you will find it to be enjoyable and stimulating.