Event: 12th annual Enhancement Themes Conference
Speaker: Professor Peter McGeorge
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H:
So welcome all and I will try and be as short as possible in my summing up and I should say at the
start that up until this point my tutor, wherever she is, over there, has provided me with copious
notes as to what I have to do and say. The types of materials that I suspect that when they were
being prepared is the type of the thing that you get, that kind of long sigh in academic staffrooms
and comments about ‘oh he just needs spoon-feeding’. Unfortunately my note for this particular
part just says ‘Peter, sum up the main points’. I have to say in retrospect that my guess is that there
are an awful lot of our students sitting exams at this time of year who’ve got questions on their
disciplines that look remarkably like that. Given the pedagogic approach I’ve been given to date,
which is largely from being ‘spoon-fed’ then I have to say that I am particularly poorly developed in
terms of my critical thinking skills to address this particular assignment. I’d also point out that ‘Peter,
sum up the main points’ lacks an awful lot of the assessment criteria for me to be able to do this
properly.
Just to point that out I’m not sure how my self-efficacy is going to be improved and we have learnt a
lot that that is very important from the presentations. I will be reflecting that particular aspect in my
course evaluations and particularly in the curriculum round table design process that Sally Kift
talked about it our first keynote. That said, I’m going to try and avoid falling back on the strategy
bemoaned by many of my colleagues of simply repeating back what was in the presentations
hoping that that’s going to be good enough for a pass. So what are my kind of key take-home
points from the conference, and I think Roni’s touched on a number of these but I am going to
reiterate them.
The first, and as I say it’s been mentioned by a number of people and it was illustrated by the
performance that we had from the Royal Conservatoire, it was illustrated by the student panel
presentation that we had. As we grapple with clearly the issues that arise in any sector, and in this
case higher education, the one thing we should never forget is to forget what this is all about, and
that’s about our students. Not students as a collective, but each individual and each one of those
students has a unique story and a lot of what came across in a lot of the presentations that I heard
was we’ve got to be conscious of that and find ways of adapting what we do to that uniqueness.
The second, again related to students, I think has been illustrated by the unbelievably high quality of
the workshops and presentations that students at this conference have given. I’ve been absolutely
amazed at how high the quality was, in many ways I can think of academic colleagues in places that
would struggle to reach that level of expertise in their presentations and I think that’s a testament to
what is happening and their engagement with the process. It also points out to me that while it is
absolutely true, and we’ve talked a lot at this conference about how we need to support students
through transitions and particular points and support them through particular issues that they may
face, what we also shouldn’t forget is that we should never be afraid to challenge them because
when we challenge our students to do something the experience that I see is they absolutely shine
and I think, yes we need to have support, yes we need to tailor that support in the right way, but not
that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be challenging them because when we do they are brilliant.
The third thing, I think relates to something that I’ve mentioned to someone before and George who
highlights in his book, the same book that I’ve been pushing right the way through the conference
as requested. I think it’s College Success, available at all good bookstores and in this case it’s not in
relation to the positive restlessness that Alice mentioned earlier which is on page 146 if I remember
correctly from what you said earlier, but relating to something else which is one of the things that
you have to be careful of with an enhancement led approach, one and I’ll mention the other one in a
minute, is that, that George highlights is that you have to be careful that by constantly looking to
enhance things you don’t forget to celebrate the really good stuff that’s going on. Yes there are
things that we need to make better, that will always be things that we need to make better, that’s
what enhancement means but we mustn’t do that whilst forgetting to celebrate all the exceptionally
good things that are going on. I think one of the things that this conference does and has done
really well is to highlight all of those really good things and we need to celebrate them.
This kind of relates to the first two, because I think that enhancement and that approach works best
when you have everybody working together. Staff in institutions, students in institutions, the
agencies, enhancement goes hand in hand with partnership and I think it is, what I would say, is
part of what George was talking about in his key note about the whole institution approach. You
have to get everybody on board to do these kinds of things. Again I think that was clearly illustrated
in an awful lot of the presentations that I saw.
Alice Brown mentioned the issue about evidencing impact and I think correctly… well I’m going to
argue that in a minute, recognised that you can’t reduce enhancement and impact to a number, not
that I want to argue with the chair of the Scottish Funding Council, but I will. I think you can, and I
think that number is one, and I’ll come back to that one in a minute. When I spoke with Alice
previously, I said if we could find some way to bottle the enthusiasm and the ethos and the
accomplishments that you see in events like this conference and other sector events around
enhancement, then it would be job done. If we had a way of doing that and we would be able to
demonstrate without a shadow of a doubt what a great approach this is in the higher education
sector.
In listening to the many excellent presentations and looking at the posters it’s clear that that kind of
desire, drive and ability to enhance the learning experience of students permeates right through the
system. We’ve heard about institutional level, we’ve heard about programmes, courses, staff,
talking to individual students. It’s right through the system, it may not be that we all talk about this
as enhancement but that’s what it is and again I think just like we sometimes say students really
need to understand what feedback is and recognise feedback when it’s happening I think there’s a
flip side to that is we need to recognise when enhancement’s happening and be able to tell people
about it. Again as George reminded me, the other issue about that enhancement, that positive
restlessness that he talks about in his book is that the other thing is all of this stuff that we’ve heard,
all of these really great ideas we also need to take back that if you want to have space to innovate
then you’ve got to be able to stop doing the things that aren’t working as well and I think often as a
sector we are actually much poorer at the stopping than we are at listening to the next good things
that we’re going to do. I think exactly as George highlights we really, really need to look into that.
The number one, that number I said that I’d argue with Alice about not being able to reduce
enhancement to a single number, well the number one comes from the fact that we should always
remember each individual student is unique. That’s where the one comes from. If you want to
reduce enhancement to a number it’s one and the one stands for the individual.
So these are just some of the kind of take home points for me and I know others have talked about
others, I’m also going to take home, and there are way too many presentations and posters to name
them individually, a huge number of ideas and practices which I think might address my obvious
need to enhance my critical thinking, my independence and efficacy and even possibly my
employability. Also hopefully try and take on board some of those things whilst looking about, as I
said, what we might stop doing. I have to say that trying to take on board some of the advice from
some of the other presentations I actually approached one of my members of staff, one of my tutors,
Roni, wherever she is, probably gone, to ask for some formative feedback on my presentation to
which she replied, “Rather brief and does not really answer the question as set.” Again not sure
how that’s going to improve my self-efficacy but it’s okay because I’ll probably not remember it for
the next assignment anyway and clearly what I was asking was, what was the mark?
I’ve got a whole list of thank you’s I want to do which, without a kind of bronze statue, doesn’t quite
feel right but I’ll give it my best shot and it will finish obviously with my stylist and tailor. First and
foremost conferences like this are absolutely dependent on the organisation that goes in to putting
them together and I think what I would like to do now is to get a round of applause for all of those
individuals who have been involved, from the QAA, from the organisation team, particularly I’m
going to pick out Christine and Sarah for all the work that they’ve done but I know everybody else
has done a fantastic amount of work. I know Ian, in part of the chairing the conference committee
it’s been fine. So one of the things I’d ask you to do is just a round of applause for those individuals.
[Audience applause]
The other things that you have to have if a conference is going to succeed are delegates who are
enthusiastic, knowledgeable and enjoy what they do, and that’s what I think we’ve had at this
conference. Whenever I’ve spoken with anybody it’s really clear how enthusiastic, how wellgrounded people are, and thankfully how, I hope, how good a time they were having. So the other
group of people that I think we should give a round of applause to are everybody that’s here and
everybody who was here as delegates to this conference because without that the whole things
goes flat anyway, so another round of applause for yourselves.
[Audience applause]
I also have to thank a number of other people, the Scottish Funding Council who fund the
Enhancement Theme’s work, and funds the attendance of certainly the Scottish delegates here,
some of our sponsors, PebblePad, I’ve seen their stand, some of our sponsors have provided
sponsorship in kind, we saw a picture earlier of Tunnock’s Tea Cakes, there were are that was the
sponsorship in kind. One which I didn’t realise and I’m not quire sure, Make Believe Events, I’m
slightly not sure what that is but that’s fine, Make Believe Events and Eden Mill Brewery who, had
you been at any of the evening events would have noticed their contribution.
All of the papers will be appearing on our online conference proceedings probably later in the
summer, the film presentations will be appearing on the website, you’ll get an evaluation
questionnaire. My final task is to say that as you undergo that difficult transition from the
conference to home, or in some rare cases from the conference to work in which case you probably
need to re-look at your work/life balance at this point, may you have a very safe journey and looking
ahead dates for diaries are net Enhancement Theme conference is already pencilled for 9th June
next year, dates will be circulated. Our next international conference is already pencilled in for 6th to
8th June 2017, and I know because I’ve spoken with Christine that she’s already beginning to think
about the structure of that one. So again I look forward to seeing you again in the future, have a
safe trip home, thank you for being here.