Higher Education Futures: Making a Positive Difference
Wednesday 4 – Friday 6 November 2009, Cardiff Marriott Hotel
What do people most value about the annual Staff Development Conference for higher education? Year on year, the formal and informal opportunities for professional and social networking rate highly in feedback from the 130+ delegates from around the sector. Also valued is the range of contributions, which included keynotes, interactive plenaries and parallel sessions.
Despite - or perhaps because of - today's cold economic climate, this year's conference in Cardiff challenged staff and organisational developers in higher education to consider how they can make - and demonstrate - a positive difference now and for the future.
The 2009 conference aimed to encourage networking before, during and after the event, making the most of technology as well as face-to-face discussions. It also encouraged an even wider range of contributions, including both the scholarly and the practical, to acknowledge the wealth of experience and knowledge delegates bring as well as recognising the increasing number of developers undertaking research through funded projects or higher degrees.
Programme
Conference keynote speakers included Rhodri Morgan, First Minister of Wales, speaking on 'setting the scene for higher education’s next 3-5 years' and Paul Kearns, Director of learning and development consultancy PWL, speaking about 'evidence-based learning and development: the real purpose of evaluation and ROI'.
For full details of the Staff Development Conference 2009 view the programme in Detail or in At a glance format.
There were a number of Parallel Session Options available. Full details of which are available as a word document.
Presentations
A selection of the keynote presentations and workshops (usually but not necessarily in the form of Powerpoint slides) can be found below:
Plenary: Positive partnership panel: how can professional groups work together to make a positive difference in higher education?
Panellists: Maureen Skinner (Association of University Administrators), Juliet Amos, Director of HR, University of Teesside (Universities Human Resources) and Simeon Underwood, London School of Economics (Academic Registrars’ Council).
Plenary: What makes an effective organisational development practitioner?
Professor José Chambers, Assistant Vice-Chancellor, University of Winchester and Chair, OD in higher education group
Plenary: Evaluation of leadership and management development
Jean Harrison, Interim HR Director, University of Westminster, and Tom Irvine, Director of Consultancy, Leadership Foundation