Conference Report - HEA STEM: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 2013

HEA STEM: Annual Learning and Teaching Conference 2013: Where practice and pedagogy meet

• Date: 17 Apr 2013 - 18 Apr 2013
• Location/venue: University of Birmingham

Keynotes speeches

• Martyn Poliakoff - Martyn is a Research Professor in Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. The keynote revolved around te experiences of producing several hundred youtube video on chemistry. 
• Carl Gombrich  Programme Director, Arts and Sciences (BASc) since September 2010 discussed the experiences and challenges of running of an interdisciplinary arts and science course.

Sessions

10 parallel sessions covering discipline specific areas (such as biological sciences, chemistry, computing, engineering, mathematics,physics, psychology) as well more teaching and learning related (such as students as partners, problem-solving, contract cheating, employability). See http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/stem-conference/STEMconf-programme-11-4-13.pdf for more details.

Poster Sessions

32 posters covering similar subjects areas to the sessions. See http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/STEM/Conference_2013/STEMposters-10-4-13.pdf for more details.

Summary

Two papers from University of Northampton were presented (oral presentation by Rachel Maunder "Forming new relationships with students: Exploring the potential of staffstudent partnerships for undertaking pedagogic research" and my poster "junkbots")

My own 'take home points'

• Contract cheating - to help post your assignment on Turnitin before giving it to the students.
• Problem-solving and programming - most universities struggle with this one to a lesser or greater extent. So in other words there still more work needed here.
• Argument Mapping- reinforced the idea that I have been considering for a while about including argument mapping within my teaching (see whats-is-problem-with-problem-solving.
• OpenSim could make a good tool for teaching - possible AI?