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SDF’s Festival of Learning and Development 2022

Influence, engage and augment… gearing up for your future L&D

Date: 14, 15 and 16th November 2022
Venue: SDF Zoom and AdvanceHE connect

 Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future
Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate

Predicting the requirements of upskilling and reskilling the ‘old’ whilst training and learning the ‘new’ hold sway with greatest growth of opportunities, challenges and uncertainties. Is technological revolution, human revolution or skill revolution going to change the Learning and Development landscape in a significant way?

In the shift from face to face learning accelerated by the pandemic, how are L&D professionals being bold and innovative with the learning we are now delivering? How can leaders ignite and galvanise workforces through these unprecedented times? How can you raise the value of L&D in your organisation?

In a world of permanent flux, how is flexible working going to reshape the world of work? The yearning is for creating a culture of flexible and agile working to improve employee wellbeing, enable recruitment, retention and career progression. In the landscape of developing our organisations, how are you reassessing the role of the staff developer? 

As L&D professionals, we are facing a resource crunch with respect to these huge deliverables. Since the rate of technological advancement of globalisation cannot be slowed, we have this enormous responsibility to invest, import and adapt. We need to recognise, build on and amplify our collective vision for a strong, resilient, and inclusive future.

Key themes

This year’s SDF Festival of Learning and Development will focus on four key themes:

  • Refining the staff developer’s tools – Getting to grips with data analytics, blending the learning in masterful ways, harnessing the power of influencing and negotiating, or creating, innovating and predicting like a wizard. Let’s reimagine what we can do.
  • Evolving our leaders and managers – Support and flourish managers and leaders, new and ongoing, in managing the gaps made visible by the necessity of embracing flexible ways of working. How are we building line manager capability in the new world of work?
  • Augmenting the staff developer’s victories – Grow on ‘atomic’ or ‘local’ successes, by sharing what was developed and works, how you are blending the learning, and how you are implementing reflective evaluations. How could others do the same?
  • Metamorphosing the staff developer role – Understand what a staff developer is and how it relates to organisational development. Where are the synergies? How can we support career progression in professional roles? What is the future?

Format

These themes will be explored through active learning approaches in the formats of workshops, symposium, Pecha Kucha presentations, learning playground activities (quick demos and trials), and our partners.

This year we would really like to encourage submissions for the Pecha Kucha sessions. Last year’s feedback highlighted these sessions were very well received. Pecha Kucha created plenty of opportunities for creativity, co-creation, as well as interaction and knowledge exchange.

All sessions will be delivered via Zoom and will be allocated 45 minutes.

  1. Pecha Kucha session (4 Pecha Kucha presentations @ 10 mins per presentation including Q&A) (Each Pecha Kucha follows 20×20 format: 20 slides at 20 secs per slide)
  2. Workshops (15 mins interactive presentation /15 mins group activity /15 mins roundup)
  3. Symposium (15 mins presentation #1 /15 mins presentation #2 /15 mins Q&A) 
  4. Learning Playground (15 mins presentation /15 mins group activity / 15 mins roundup)
  5. Open to other formats as long as it guarantees audience participation and engagement

Proposal Form

Session contribution proposal form – please complete and submit if you would like to propose a session

Deadline

25 July 2022


Dr Rossana Espinoza

SDF Chair