The Learning at City St Georges Conference – Overview

The Learning at City Conference is an annual event organised by Learning Enhancement and Development (LEaD) at City St George’s, University of London.

It usually takes place at the University in late June or early July and is an opportunity for staff to share good practice and to showcase learning and teaching activities, projects and initiatives that they are involved in.

All staff from City, St George’s are eligible to take part by either submitting an abstract for consideration or by attending the conference.

Each year the conference has a theme related to the University’s priorities and/or current trends in Higher Education.

Themes and links to resources for previous conferences:

Learning at City St Georges conference 2025 – Ignite the Spark: Inspiring Student Engagement and Motivation

Student engagement and motivation is central to ensuring our institutions remain student-centred and also involving students in decisions about their education. Learning should be social, active, engaging, authentic and collaborative. We want students to engage and enjoy their learning. We also need to ensure it is inclusive and flexible.

Whilst institutions have used a range of approaches to collect student feedback such as surveys, focus groups and student-staff liaison committees the feedback focuses on what students think is positive but also what changes might be needed. It does not often ask students about what motivates and engages them to learn nor do we always include them in research and development to enhance this aspect. Students as partners schemes are one approach to providing students with an opportunity to be able to share their views on engagement and be involved in making change. Co-creation of learning experiences is another.

Lowe (2023) refers to students continuing to change the way they learn, use resources and engage with each other and staff who provide and support their education. The importance of recognising this and involving “students as being mutual producers of knowledge” (Lowe 2023:289) and “fully participating as partners in making changes in our universities” (Lowe 2023:289) is essential to future engagement of students in their education.

Learning at City Conference 2024 – Re-imagining assessment for learning in a changing HE landscape

Assessment powerfully frames how students learn, what they achieve and what they gain from their experience of higher education (Boud 2010). Despite us all knowing this there continues to be issues with the forms of assessment we use, how students engage with these and the purpose of the assessment activities used. This has been a source of both student and staff frustration over a number of years. The debates have continued but so too has the shift to authentic assessment and Sambell and Brown (2021) provide a range of examples of these. McArthur (2023) adds to this discussion but calls for rethinking authentic assessment to include the relevance or purpose of assessment in relation to society and the purpose of assessment. As the sector continues to look at what might be best practice for assessment including feedback now is an appropriate time to be exploring this and how practices may have changed.

Learning at City Conference 2023 – Engaging students in collaboration and partnerships

There has been an increased focus on student engagement and partnership over the last decade and we know that this enhances the students’ sense of belonging. The Student Futures Commission in collecting evidence for their manifesto (2022) heard how students felt empowered during the pandemic when they worked with colleagues in the Universities to co-create solutions and initiatives to support learning and well-being. There have been a range of examples of students engaging in partnership to enhance their learning through involvement in teaching and learning initiatives and co-creation of the curriculum (Bryson 2014 & Sather et al 2014). Healey et al (2014) produced a model for such activity and guidance to support colleagues develop partnership schemes.

Learning at City Conference 2022 – Opportunities to transform the future of higher education

The place of digital learning became central to education due to the pandemic and this change in models of teaching, learning and assessment are here to stay (Maguire, Dale & Pauli 2020). This has enabled staff and students to be creative and the future offers many opportunities to transform learning so that it is inclusive, accessible and flexible. Sharples (2019) discussed the transformations occurring not just through bringing technology into classes but through real improvements in the theory and practice of teaching.

Learning at City Conference 2021 – Teach to Inspire: Showcasing good practice in higher education

The Covid pandemic led to a swift move from face to face and blended learning to many providing all learning fully online. Whilst for some, both students and academics, this has not always been positive there have been many exciting and inspiring teaching practices as a result of this. Even when things did not go as planned there has been good practice learnt from this and others would benefit from the sharing of these experiences.

Images from Learning at City 2024