The event took place on Wednesday 13 November 2024
You can find the full programme here.
The day opened with an introduction to the framing concept of Boundary Crossing, exploring its challenges and potential for learning and creativity. This was followed by parallel sessions on interdisciplinary and multi-professional education, students and staff working in partnership, and on initiatives and programme designs that enable students to take on the roles of researcher. The closing plenary was given by Dr Chris Blunt and Dr Jillian Terry who are Co-Directors of an award winning interdisciplinary programme (LSE100) for all first year undergraduates at the London School of Economics. Their talk ‘Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: Tackling Wicked Problems through Interdisciplinary Learning’ described the thinking behind the course, its value, and the practical measures in place to ensure its sustainability and success.
A selection from participants’ reflections gives a flavour of the day:
‘Made me think really carefully about what the point of interdisciplinary is and how essential it is to get that in focus in order to inform actions’
“Crossing boundaries but also having them are equally important and starting that process whilst in education is good practice for the professional environment”
‘Emphasising the importance of perspective and ensuring this is NOT boundaried but is permeable and moveable’
There’s potential for ‘bringing together disciplines in science and healthcare but also more broadly across a range of disciplines […] particularly in brainstorming solutions to wicked problems’
“Reaching out and working with new disciplines as well as with students across the different Schools at CSG. This is a very exciting prospect!’ but ‘making time in my ‘day job’ to get creative and expand my ways of thinking’ is a challenge.
‘Reignited my passion for interdisciplinarity [….] ‘leaves me asking what the persistent barriers are and why they’re persistent – and how we might dismantle them and sustain change’
Autumn Education Day also included celebration of staff’s achievements in obtaining Advance HE Fellowships, a National Teaching Fellowship (Angela Kubacki), as well as the Clinical Pharmacology team’s prestigious British Pharmacological Society’s Rang Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Teaching. The celebrations were led by City St George’s President, Professor Sir Anthony Finkelstein.
Anthony together with Professor Jane Saffell also participated in a fascinating ‘Open Spaces ‘At Home’ discussion in the middle of the day in which they reflected on key points in their educational and working lives, several of which involved encountering and bridging boundaries in ways that opened up new and rewarding opportunities for them.
This event took place on Wednesday 29 November 2023.
Assessment and feedback practices are considered ‘amongst the most powerful levers educators have for improving student learning’ yet positive student experiences of assessment can often be hard to achieve. During the day we asked: How can we address this challenge? What works? Where do we need to think differently?
Professor Kathleen Quinlan and Dr Edd Pitt from the University of Kent and authors of Advance HE’s 2022 literature review on the impact of assessment and feedback policy and practice on students in higher education gave the opening keynote. View the recording of Kathleen and Edd’s keynote.
This event took place on Wednesday 3 May 2023.
The theme running through this event was community, connection and learning together. The day was opened by our keynote speaker, Dr Karen Gravett from the University of Surrey. Karen’s thinking on ‘belonging’ and ‘mattering’ in education and her foregrounding of relationships, spaces, places and objects were intended to frame the subsequent sharing of ideas, practice and challenges and stimulate insights into how these dimensions play out in the particular kinds of education St George’s values and provides.
This event took place on Wednesday 21 November 2021.
This was the first Education Day after the Covid-19 lockdowns. There was a focus on Inclusive Education, and an interactive workshop from the Bristol Improv Theatreon ways of fostering positive student engagement in learning, whether teaching in person or online, using three concepts: creative facilitation, active support and resilience.