An engaging day
Over 500 participants attended the Third Annual Student Education Conference, which took place on Friday 10 January 2014 - the theme was Engaging Leeds.
Vice-Chancellor Sir Alan Langlands opened the day to a packed Rupert Beckett Lecture Theatre and paid tribute to all the hard work staff undertake to engage with and inspire both the University’s students and its various publics. He introduced the morning's keynote speaker, Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor of the Open University and founder of FutureLearn, who gave an inspiring discussion about how higher education institutions must adapt to new ways of engaging with their communities and considered how to engage more effectively with new and distant audiences.
Delegates visited an exhibition area in Parkinson Court that included over 30 stands from around the University, and were also able to choose from a programme of 19 parallel sessions, five symposia and 13 workshops before reconvening for the SEC3 afternoon keynote speech, when Professor Viv Jones announced the 2014 University Student Education Fellowship awards.
Sophie Duncan, Assistant Director of the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement, closed the day with a lively overview of what public engagement is, what kind of activities it can include, and how the University can improve its own programme of public engagement activities.
Abstracts and slides are available on the Student Education Conference website and lecture capture of the keynotes will shortly be uploaded.