SDF’s Festival of Learning & Development 2024

Synopsis: A lot is changing in our lives right now, driven by technology, economics, politics and demographics. The results: we can expect some profound shifts in L&D. These shifts bring challenges and opportunities. To overcome the challenges and make the most of the opportunities we need the right skills and knowledge – and also a different, wider mindset.

Join Donald H Taylor as he explores what the future of learning at work looks like. Sure, AI is important, but equally important is our ability to leave behind assumptions about the role of L&D and embrace the reality of new ways of working.

• The huge changes that AI enables
• The impact of the changing nature of work
• Building the (very different) L&D department of the future

Synopsis: Faced with disruptive change you need everyone working together for rapid evolution. But do your leaders, managers and teams have the necessary mindset, ability and skills? 

Join me to apply the PRIME model tools to combine foresight with flexibility, enabling you to meet the challenges of the changing work ecosystem.

Synopsis:
– Highlight how coaching provides L&D professionals with a dedicated space for introspection, goal-setting, and skill development.
– Explore the challenges of prioritising being coached in the context of busy schedules and competing demands.
– Coach your peers in a short interactive exercise, to help them to self-reflect.

Synopsis: As a rule, our Teams don’t always harness the power of our collective thinking. This isn’t because we don’t have the ability, and it isn’t because we don’t want to. It’s just that we have never been given an effective process or the right conditions, for thinking as a Team. This session aims to change all that; to make thinking easier, quicker, more effective and more fun!

Synopsis: What attributes do leaders in HE need to have? And what is it that makes them different to leaders in other sectors? Advance HE has been wrestling with these questions over the past year, whilst it has been working across the sector to develop a Global Leadership Framework for higher education. The framework will be published by early 2025, and in the meantime we are giving SDF an early preview. In this interactive keynote we’ll share the story and the structure of the framework, and together we’ll explore and play with the possibilities it brings for us as leaders in our own right, and for the leaders and future leaders in our institutions.

Objectives:

• Get an early preview of Advance HE’s new Leadership Framework
• Experiment and play with the structure and concepts to consider how you might use it for your own work and for your institutions
• Play your part in the shaping of the product, share your insights and ideas as part of our sector-wide consultation

Synopsis: Adaptive leadership is essential for Higher Education leaders today to respond to current and future challenges in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. For leaders to be successful in this environment it is essential they can adapt in the face of constant change and learn as they go to meet the ever-increasing leadership challenges. This session will provide participants with the opportunity to sample first-hand a series of reflective tools drawn on GatenbySanderson’s experience designing and developing bespoke transformational leadership. We will include techniques to engage a range of audiences including academic leaders, and support individual participant transformation in mindset, behaviours and approach.

Synopsis: In this engaging Pecha Kucha session, Gary Hosey, an acclaimed expert in emotional intelligence and leadership, delves into the latest insights from neuroscience to revolutionise learning and reflection. Discover how leveraging the power of neuroplasticity and emotional intelligence can foster continuous personal and professional growth. Attendees will learn how to harness these principles to adapt and thrive in the fast-paced digital age, enhancing their success and happiness. This session combines a concise, impactful presentation with interactive Q&A segments to provide practical tools and strategies for transformative learning.

Synopsis: How to use virtual settings to help staff develop their wellbeing and resilience, their career development, their leadership and their workplace communities. 

Synopsis: “Universities are in freefall” writes Gaby Hinsliffe in the Guardian. Such headlines are hardly surprising for anyone working in the UK higher education sector. Reported deficits, restructuring and redundancies combine with a need to be future focussed as technological advances and global disruption present significant leadership challenges.

In such an environment, the role of learning professionals has never been more significant in supporting the transformation of individuals and organisations. But with change being the only constant, what are the priorities? Drawing on a series of conversations with Vice-Chancellors and others in executive leadership roles, I detail their concerns, their ambitions and their perspectives on how leadership development can be focussed to enable universities and those who work in them to flourish.

Synopsis: How can we empower HE professionals to be innovative and inclusive leaders in constantly shifting contexts? Part of the answer is through developing their ability to learn from experience, apply this learning to changing environments and unlearn behaviours that no longer serve them. In short, it’s through learning agility.  

Synopsis: The session will introduce the recent developments in the NTDC HETT Technical Career pathway framework;  and the project work involved in the creation and implementation of the pathway with some of the 25+ institutions who have used it.

An interactive part of the session will ask which challenges/progress staff developers have seen in their experiences of career pathways and how we can support them.

Synopsis: Embrace technological change through a job crafting card game – a powerful tool for personalising work experiences. This interactive session empowers attendees to craft meaningful tasks, build authentic relationships, reframe their purpose, develop skills, and prioritise their wellbeing in order to humanise the experience of work in the face of continued technological change and disruption.

Synopsis: This practical session shows how leaders, coaches, and mentors in Higher Education can integrate micro-moments of reflection into conversations in the face of their busy digital lives

Synopsis: This session will examine specific recent examples of generative AI in Higher Education, providing practical illustrations of its impact. It will argue why AI is likely to enhance, not decrease, the importance of L&D and staff development professionals in the near future.  Join Charles Knight of Advance HE as he explores how AI will drive changes to the staff skills base, increasing the need for specific training and development. These practical examples of change will be provided, giving a clear picture of what this means for L&D professionals. 

• What does AI mean for the skills of the workforce of the future?
• How should L&D professionals react to these changes? 

Synopsis: Results of our latest research indicate that organisations may be overlooking the impact of remote and hybrid working on team engagement and organisational culture.  
The findings indicate that a successful hybrid working strategy must have team engagement at its centre, along with individual performance and engagement.  
This is the first study of this kind linking findings on remote and hybrid working to Belbin Team Roles. Such an approach keeps team cohesion and engagement at the core, whilst promoting individual strengths in a way that benefits the individual and the team in unison.

Synopsis: This session will focus on how we have shifted our learning proposition from a series of individual courses to a suite of connected learning within a core capability framework, linked directly to the strategic direction and future needs of our University.  
This includes developing stronger links to workforce planning and supporting development conversations.  

Workshop: Reflective practice is something that we tend to do at certain times, but have you thought about this as a daily practice? A lot of us tend to reflect on what we can do better or areas to improve, how many of us reflect on what has gone well?