Welcome to the TAL conference website. The main theme of the conference is activating teaching and active learning which are the fundamental principles at the University of Southern Denmark, SDU. The conference intends to support practitioners’ mutual inspiration and present knowledge and experiences on how students’ learning is enhanced in accordance with the fundamental principles of SDU.
This year we direct our attention to Employability – we will focus on how teaching in higher education may promote students developing as attractive and competent partners on a future labour market.
Time and place: Thursday November 14th 2019, from 9am to 4pm at Syddansk Universitet (Odense).
CONFERENCE MATERIAL:
Book of Abstractsincluding:
- Detailed programme
- Short communications and poster abstracts
- Workshop abstracts
Keynote Lorraine Dacre Pool:
Video recordings:
Welcome by Rie Troelsen, head of SDU Centre for Teaching and Learning
Keynote Lorraine Dacre Pool: Employability in Higher Education
Panel debate with keynote Lorraine Dacre Pool, and from SDU: Anni Søborg, head of Uddannelsesinnovation; Kim Bæksgaard - Research & Innovation Organisation andTine Lynfort Jensen - Department of Language and Communication
Target group: The conference target group is primarily employees at the SDU and University Colleges within the region. Meanwhile, the conference is open to everyone and abstracts and sign ups from participants from other national and international universities and other educational institutions are more than welcome.
The objective of the conference is to provide for the participants an opportunity to
- share, document, demonstrate, reason and analyze their own examples of activating teaching and active learning
- be inspired to develop their own practice of activating teaching and active learning
The special focus of this year’s conference is to:
- focus on what we understand by employability in Higher Education, and why it is important?
- discuss how ordinary, Higher Education teachers may strengthen teaching for employability?
- introduce some excellent examples of teaching for employability in Higher Education
- discuss how the university may strengthen education for employability at an institutional level (opportunities and barriers)?
The main conference theme is as always activating teaching and active learning.
The special focus this year will be on ’Employability’
The conference is aiming at enlightening teaching for employability in various ways. There is seemingly no consensus on a single definition of employability in Higher Education. It has for example been defined as ‘a set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that makes graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy’, and it has been characterized as a complex construct (Yorke, 2004).
Irrespective of definition preferred, employability is a legitimate concern for many stakeholders of Higher Education.
It is also an area where lots of interesting new developments are occurring in Danish Higher Education these years. These developments take place in many different contexts and cover both curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular activities for students.
The TAL conference is the perfect opportunity to come and share lessons learned and to be inspired by current initiatives aiming at developing Danish higher education for employability.
TAL2019:
- Keynote on Employability by Dr. Lorraine Dacre Pool
- Parallel sessions - short presentations, poster presentations and workshops on activating teaching and active learning as well as employability
- Panel discussion
Keynote speaker: Dr. Lorraine Dacre Pool, Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT), University of Central Lancashire
Short presentation of Dr. Lorraine Dacre Pool
At the TAL 2019 conference teachers, educational developers, supervisors, researchers, career supervisors, students and others with an interest in the area will contribute with short presentations or posters on practical examples, experiences and research within the following topics:
Special focus - Employability
- Employability within a teaching context
- Employability as an extra-curricular activity
- Employability as educational strategy
- Employability as collaboration with the broader society or external partners
- Employability, education and effects
- Other
Conference proceedings: Presenters will subsequently have the possibility of having their contributions included in the conference proceedings.
Programme committee: The Centre for Teaching and Learning at SDU:
- Cita Nørgård, cnorgaard@sdu.dk
- Lotte Dyhrberg O'Neill, ldo@sdu.dk
- Vibeke Damlund, vdamlund@sdu.dk
For questions of a practical nature please contact Anne Grete Petersen, agpetersen@sdu.dk
References:
- Dacre Pool, L., Qualter, P., & J. Sewell, P. J. E. T. (2014). Exploring the factor structure of the CareerEDGE employability development profile. 56(4), 303-313.
- Dacre Pool, L., & Sewell, P. J. E. T. (2007). The key to employability: developing a practical model of graduate employability. 49(4), 277-289.
- Yorke, M. J. (2004). Employability in the undergraduate curriculum: Some student perspectives. European Journal of Education, 39(4), 409-427.