Reflections on the AdvanceHE Teaching & Learning Conference 2025

The UK AdvanceHE Teaching & Learning (T&L) Conference 2025, themed “Future-Focused Education: Ensuring Successful Student Outcomes for All”, was held at the Wave, University of Sheffield in July 2025 (https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/Programmes-events/conferences/Teaching-Learning-2025#programme). It brought together colleagues from across universitas to share ideas, experiences about how we can continue to improve teaching and learning for all our students. I first heard about the conference through a SoTL@SHU event earlier in the year, which introduced opportunities to get involved with teaching and learning scholarship. I applied for and was delighted to receive SoTL funding to attend the first day of the conference. This support made it possible for me to take part, learn from others, and begin my own SoTL journey.

A New Experience of Collective Learning

As someone attending a LTA focussed conference for the first time, I found the event both inspiring and welcoming. It was encouraging to see how colleagues openly shared their teaching ideas, from creative classroom practices to small interventions that made difference for students.

Many sessions offered practical takeaways that I could immediately relate to my own modules. It emphasised my knowledge about the importance of timely and constructive feedback, and how peer review in team projects can be structured more clearly – with clear rubrics and guidance – to make the process fairer and more meaningful for students.

Another key takeaway was the growing use of Generative AI (GenAI) in curricula. Many colleagues are already experimenting with ways GenAI and large language models (LLMs) can support learning, from helping students plan their projects to improving the quality of feedback. These examples helped me think more critically about how I could integrate GenAI into my own teaching.

Keynote Highlight: AI in Education

One of the most memorable sessions was the keynote by Professor Philip Hanna, Dean of Education at Queen’s University Belfast, titled “AI in Education: Defining Challenges, Shaping Solutions.”

He talked about how artificial intelligence is changing education and the world of work, and how educators must prepare students to meet future skills and work with AI, not against it. He identified three key areas of focus for educators:

• Future skills – adaptability, ethical awareness, and critical engagement with AI.
• Educators’ role – anticipating change and embedding AI understanding across courses.
• Workplace reality – human-AI collaboration as the new normal.

This message encouraged me to think in more depth about how to further help my students use GenAI responsibly and creatively, not just as a shortcut, but as a useful learning and problem-solving tool.

Putting Learning into Practice

After the conference, I presented my reflections to the wider community at the first SoTL@SHU Active Symposium (October 2025). These conversations helped me realise that what I had learned at the conference could evolve into a SoTL project exploring how Generative AI can support iterative and timely feedback in learning.

The conference also inspired some immediate changes to my teaching. In the Applied to Software Engineering module this semester, I shared my reflections with the teaching team and updated the assessment design to allow students to use GenAI tools more intentionally. For example, students can now use GenAI to support coding, documentation elicitation, and specification tasks within the Agile Scrum process.

Looking Ahead

I believe attending this Teaching and Learning conference was a great reminder that the best way to grow as an educator is to stay curious, keep reflecting, and share our journeys with others. Since the conference, I have been thinking more about how to evaluate and measure impact in my teaching. I want to develop my expertise in gathering evidence of student learning, analysing outcomes, and sharing this through academic publications.

Author

Dr. Essam Eliwa, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing and Digital Technologies