Cape Town in November: The Higher education close up conference

The HECU9 conference in Cape Town will take place at the Vineyard hotel, a short distance from the beautiful botanical gardens.

Just before the HELTASA conference in Port Elizabeth in November 2018, Cape Town will host the Higher Education Close-Up conference. Why not combine the two conferences and spend the weekend either in Cape Town or Port Elizabeth? Unfortunately, such an excursion will not come cheap, but looking at the call for papers from both these events, it will surely be worth every cent.

The Close-Up conference will take place at the four-star Vineyard Hotel from 15 to 16 November. The theme for HECU9 is Contemporary higher education: Close-up research in times of change. Keynote speakers are: Prof Penny Jane Burke, Dr Tristan McCowan and Prof Aslam Fataar. The call for papers is open until 2 July 2018 and the conference fee (early bird until middle August) is a stiff R5 600. Proposals should answer one of six questions:

·        Diversity, equity and social justice: what forms does diversity take, and how should our thinking change in order to promote equity and conditions for social justice in higher education?

·        The changing purposes of higher education: a right or privilege? A public or private good? Employability as the mission? Bundling or un-bundling?

·        Policy, access and success: what is the role of close-up research in informing policy making around access to university, more inclusive curricula and finding new ways to help students succeed in higher education?

·        Critical citizenship and critical thinking: in a “post-truth” world of misinformation, disinformation and ‘fake news’, how should pedagogy adapt to support students in becoming more critically aware, engaged, and thoughtful? How can close-up research lead a response to the growing anti-intellectualism characterised by a conflation of expertise and elitism?

·        Literacy: how do new forms of technology, knowledge-making and writing challenge being literate in the 21st century?

·        Imagining the future: more change - what promises and possibilities, constraints and enablings do current close-up research reveal?

The call for papers for the Learner Conference 2019 is already open

In 2019, Common Ground's Learner conference will take place in Belfast at Queen's University.  

Do you plan to go to the United Kingdom next year to enjoy the summer? If so, here is some good news: you can submit your proposal for the twenty-sixth International Conference on Learning now and start planning the trip. Advanced registration is  also open until 24 October 2018 for $500. The cost will increase to $650 after 24 July 2019.  Returning members and students also get a discounted registration rate. Paying in dollars will ease the pain a little as the South African Rand is weaker against the British pound.

The Learner conference forms part of the Common Ground Research Network group that offers a large range of conferences all over the world in several disciplines. The 2019 Learner Conference will take place at Queen's University in Belfast, northern Ireland, from 24 to 26 July 2019. Queen's University is next to the large botanical garden and near the River Lagan.

The first due date for proposals is by the end of May 2018, but proposals will be accepted throughout the year. The review process of proposal submissions takes between 2 to 4 weeks.

One of the advantages of attending this kind of conference is the exposure to how other disciplines see and conduct teaching, focus on students and develop new strategies to address current challenges and problems. Ten tracks provide a large range of possibilities for delivery of focused research results on the one hand and provide delegates opportunities to expand their knowledge in other fields of  interest. The themes for the 2019 conference are:

•  Pedagogy and Curriculum
• Assessment and Evaluation
• Educational Organization and Leadership
•  Early Childhood Learning
• Learning in Higher Education
• Adult, Community, and Professional Learning
• Learner Diversity and Identities
• Technologies in Learning
• Literacy Learning
• Science, Mathematics, and Technology Learning