The changing HE landscape: implications for your teaching practices
Dr Helen King, Senior Higher Education Policy Advisor for Learning and Teaching Development, HEFCE
Dr Helen King joined HEFCE in October 2016 as a Senior Higher Education Policy Adviser working in the Learning & Teaching Policy team. Her work encompasses a range of activities including supporting the 67 small-scale ‘Catalyst’ innovation projects, providing an academic development perspective on various policy initiatives, and informing HEFCE’s ongoing strategy for learning & teaching development as it moves into the Office for Students. Her background is in the geosciences and from 1996 to 2007 she led national initiatives in discipline-specific academic development (the Earth Science Staff Development project and the Higher Education Academy [HEA] Subject Centre for Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences). From 2007 to 2010, she worked as an independent consultant for learning & teaching projects in the UK, USA and Australia, and in 2010 had 10 months as Senior Adviser at the HEA before taking up the role of Head of Academic Staff Development at the University of Bath. She is a Visiting Fellow at the University of the West of England and her current research interest is focused around the characteristics of expertise in academic practice. She holds a Senior Fellowship of the Staff & Educational Development Association, a National Teaching Fellowship and Principle Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.
What is employability?
Johnny Rich, Higher Education and Employment expert
Keynote summary below
Johnny Rich has a number of roles including Chief Executive of outreach organisation Push, Chief Executive of the Engineering Professors’ Council, and a consultant in higher education and careers. His recent clients include the European Commission, HEFCE and a host of recruiters, education bodies and media organisations. He is also a director of the Higher Education Academy.
Since founding Push in 1992, Johnny has built it into an influential award-winning social enterprise providing information, advice and research about universities, careers and employability. Push runs an award-winning programme of outreach and training events that visits nearly 400 schools and colleges each year.
The Engineering Professors’ Council is the voice of engineering in UK higher education. Under Johnny’s stewardship since 2016, its membership has grown to include over 7,500 academics in over 80 universities and the EPC has become an influential force in national policy in HE, skills and industrial strategy.
Johnny is widely regarded as an expert on student choice and information, and on employability. As a contributor to various think tanks and strategy bodies, Johnny contributes widely to policy debates on education, careers, wider participation and social mobility. He recently spearheaded a project on work-related learning.
With degrees from the Universities of Durham and East Anglia, his background also includes journalism, publishing, media relations, television and the web. He appears regularly on television and radio and is author of the highly acclaimed novel The Human Script.
Twitter: @johnnysrich
Keynote summary By Johnny Rich
The expectation that HE should provide students with ‘employability’ has grown in recent years, but what does that really mean? Employability is often confused with employment or skills and sometimes it is even placed in opposition to knowledge. In an accessible and persuasive keynote, expert Johnny Rich will outline a framework of the true components of employability. He will show how, through better understanding and awareness, we can embed employability into all learning and boost the transformative power of education in social mobility.