Education Conference 2025 Programme
Monday 23 June 2025, Strand Campus
King’s Academy’s look forward to bringing together colleagues from across King’s to share ideas, discuss current challenges in Higher Education and celebrate forward-thinking teaching and learning at our flagship event. Whether you’re presenting, joining a discussion or attending for inspiration, this is your chance to connect with peers and shape the future of education at King’s.
The conference will open with a welcome and keynote address from Professor Tansy Jessop. Tansy Jessop is Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Students at the University of Bristol, where she has led a programme of curriculum enhancement to re-imagine the design of programmes and assessment. The keynote address will explore practical assessment and feedback ideas to use across programmes to nurture agency, foster curiosity, develop human skills, and surprisingly, enable students to have more fun. By focusing on authentic and relational dimensions of assessment and feedback across programmes, she will argue that we can find better ways to assess students than retreating into closed book exams as a defence against Generative AI.
The keynote will be followed by four, one-hour session blocks where content will be presented as research/ scholarship presentations, interactive workshops, symposiums and poster presentations. We're pleased to share the 2025 programme showcases content from every King's Faculty and three Professional Directorates, with presenters in a variety of roles, including King's students.
The conference will conclude with a panel discussion where KCLSU, King's students and staff representatives will consider how we can work together to solve some of the critical challenges that are facing Higher Education. This includes, preparing students for their future careers, engaging with Generative AI as a tool to support learning and embedding sustainability in the curriculum. The panel will also discuss successes to date, such as student involvement in TASK (Transforming Assessment at King's), the King's 100 Panel and will consider how we can set a vision for partnership work that will build institutional resilience and collaboration for the future.
Content will be presented in five categories
Colleagues and students will share their experience or ideas of educational practices that prioritise both staff and student wellbeing and that foster a culture of empathy and support. Wellbeing is a growing concern for both staff and students. The number of students reporting mental health issues is more than 7 times higher than it was a decade ago, while as many as 50% of university staff may experience poor mental health. Within this context, it is critical that we discover and embed new ways of working which support staff and students from across the educational community to flourish at King’s. Content proposals in this category may focus on compassionate pedagogies that look to support the mental, emotional flourishing of students alongside their academic success. They may be focus on work to create an educational environment which sets staff and students up for success. They may focus on the wellbeing needs of members of our community, both students and staff across all roads, and how these can be supported with care and compassion.
Colleagues and students will share how they are responding to the needs, challenges or opportunities they identify as important to future developments. These may be in education for sustainability, digital futures, internationalisation, but are not limited to those. Presenters could set out the circumstances they anticipate, and what these imply for pedagogy, educational policy and/or learning environments. How should we respond to these developments and possibilities? Or what plans and projects are already underway?
Higher education needs to recognise and address circumstances that differentially disadvantage students for reasons outside their control. Colleagues will prompt and contribute to conversations about creating equitable and accessible learning environments, as we explore strategies and practices that celebrate diversity, accommodate varying needs, and enable the full participation of all students.
Within this theme, presenters reflect on opportunities – potential or existing – for our student community to shape their own educational journeys, and to propose ways in which we can foster meaningful partnerships, amplify student voices, increase student agency, and enhance their learning experience through collaborative engagement and co-creation.
Presentations will focus on curriculum design projects or curriculum research which addresses one of the themes listed below:
- What new skills, competencies or core knowledge have you embedded into your curriculum to better equip graduates facing uncertain futures?
- How did you go about identifying these learning outcomes and developing student learning towards these within your programmes of study?
- Has your work contributed to curriculum development beyond King’s, e.g. engagement with professional organizations or research associations and their curricular requirements or guidelines / subject benchmark statements?
- Applications of human-centred design to curriculum design within your discipline.
- Research projects into higher education skills development and links to labour markets or industry needs within your field.
- Research or scholarship on the social impact of higher education curricula. This could be within your subject discipline or more broadly.
Session Tags
In addition to indicating which theme each session aligns with, the following tags have been developed to help colleagues identify presentations that will be co-presented with King's students and where presenters recieved funding from a King's Academy funded call. Find out more about King's Academy's funded calls on our internal pages. Find out more about King's Academy's funded calls on our internal pages.
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Student co-presenter: where a presentation is being co-presented with King's students.
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REIEF: Launched in 2020, the Race Equity & Inclusive Education Fund (REIEF) has awarded a total of £100,000 per academic year to activity addressing racial inequalities and embedding inclusive education across King’s. REIEF is part of our institutional commitments to the Race Equality Charter Mark. You can find details of the current 23/24 call, and previous projects here
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Education for Sustainability Fund: King’s Academy and King’s Climate and Sustainability will offer funds to embed Education for Sustainability (EfS) across our curricula. EfS brings together environmental, social and economic dimensions of your subject, and teaches those in a way that enables students to put their learning into action. The funding is designed to enable lasting curriculum change and could be used to develop teaching materials, learning activities and assessment approaches, incorporate interdisciplinarity, develop external partnerships and living labs, or evaluate your existing EfS.
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Strategic College Teaching Fund: A local fund for each Faculty or Centre is allocated for projects that connect to strategic education priorities and that support the development of education scholarship by project leads/teams.
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College Teaching Fund - TASK: This fund support the implementation of the Transforming Assessment for Students at Kings (TASK) framework as part of the major changes phase.
Paper Brochures
Following feedback from previous events, paper copies of the brochure will be available to attendees who wish to use them. Sustainability is part of our ethos at King's and King's Academy have taken meaningful steps to reduce the carbon footprint of our printed programme. This includes:
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hosting poster presentation and session abstracts online, reducing the size of the paper brochure by almost 30 pages.
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printing on FCS certified paper
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using a fully ISO accredited printing partner
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fulfilling deliveries with electric vehicles
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recycling any copies that are returned to us at the end of the day
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creating online resources to enable colleagues to view sessions and plan their day in advance, if they are able to. These resources are:
Registration
Registration will open from 09.00. The registration desk will remain open all day; we politely ask all colleagues to register upon arrival, regardless of arrival time.
Quiet rooms: K0.17 and K0.31
Two quiet rooms are available for colleagues to use throughout the day. We politely ask attendees to refrain from taking calls in these rooms as they are quiet spaces reserved for quiet working, reflection and recharge during the day.
Photography
Please note, a photographer will be on site for the full duration of the event, capturing the day's activities. The photographs will be used by King's Academy for marketing and may be used in formal reporting. If you do not wish to be photographed, please inform kings-academy@kcl.ac.uk or the colleagues at the registration desk on the day who will add a sticker to your name badge.
Catering and Dietary Requirements
Catering for this event is provided by King's Food (King's Catering Partner). King’s Food is committed to sustainable catering, and endeavour to use ethical, Fairtrade, higher welfare and locally sourced produce wherever possible. During the catered parts of the event, a range of meat, fish, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and nut-free options will be provided. If you have an allergy, please speak to a member of the catering team who can assist you.
Step free access and seating
There is step-free access into and around the King's Building and Bush House's 8th floor. The event has been designed to ensure seating is available in communal areas.
Assistance on the day
Should you have any questions on the day, please speak to a colleague at the conference registration desk (located in the Great Hall), conference organiser (distinguishable by their yellow name badges) or the chair of your session.
Cancelling your place
Please note, this event is currently operating with a waiting list of over 40 colleagues. In the event you are no longer able to attend the Education Conference, please cancel your place by declining the calendar invite for the day or emailing kings-academy@kcl.ac.uk which enables us to extend a valuable place to a colleague on the waiting list.
Further Questions
If you have a question or would like to get in touch with the Education Conference team, please email kings-academy@kcl.ac.uk.