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A conference which focuses on helping SA¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ staff develop and share their teaching and support practices  has marked its tenth year with a packed programme.

The institution’s annual Learning and Teaching conference saw more than 180 employees join together to hear speakers drawn from across higher education, schools and industry, share best practice and successful strategies, and learn more about new approaches to everything from AI to wellbeing. 

Harper Adams Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor (Learning, Teaching and Digital) Professor Lydia Arnold, said: “This annual event goes from strength to strength, reflecting the commitment of colleagues at this university to continue to focus in on teaching practice, so that all of our students can have the best possible experience.

“The event brings Harper together with presentations, workshops, research from our own staff, and with experts from beyond the university. We have speakers from schools, industry and from other higher education institutions in a festival for teaching and support.”

The day was opened with a keynote address from Dr Brooke Storer-Church, the Chief Executive of Higher Education representative body  . The organisation serves 67 institutions across the country - including universities such as Harper Adams, university colleges, further education colleges and specialist institutions.

Focussing on the value of such specialist institutions in her address, Dr Storer-Church talked about the way they can contribute with industry, with regional economies, and with boosting lifelong learning.

She also noted the value such institutions have for their students, and said: “You need that diversity of institutions in order to support a diverse range of students, because different types of institutions will deploy different pedagogical approaches.

“My team in GuildHE is constantly collecting different examples, that are really enabled by smaller scale institutions – often the things that might be challenging, not having huge teams, having to multi-task and wear many hats, having to work much closer to the interface with students means you are also best placed to know what’s working for them.

“I would bet you have a better sense on a week-by-week term of what’s working for students, what’s not working, what’s coming up – and that is a lot of the benefit which you get when you are in a smaller-scale institution.”

Sessions offered by external experts throughout the day saw staff from other universities across the UK presenting, as well as both further education and school representatives, industry consultants, a dairy farmer and Nuffield Scholar, and an online session with an Associate Professor from .

Topics covered include the development of a Next Gen AI curriculum, Neurodiversity in Agriculture and beyond, and practical strategies for using prompts for Generative AI in teaching.

Meanwhile sessions offered by SA¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ and Harper & Keele Vet School staff included the use of structured play to develop learning, an insight into one of the popular workshops offered by the Wellbeing Team to help students balance University life, and an exploration of research carried out into a tiered model allowing students to choose the kind of feedback which works for them.

During the day, the achievements of staff who have received professional recognition from AdvanceHE and through the Aspire Scheme, Harper Adams’ own AdvanceHE-accredited professional recognition pathway, were marked. 

Meanwhile, during a working lunch, the winners of this year’s Student Choice awards – voted for by Harper Adams students – were announced.