Transitions and Transformations: The key roles of the EAP practitioner
Friday 7th March 2025 9.30am – 4.30pm followed by a drinks reception until 6pm
The University of Hertfordshire invites you to attend a face-to-face PIM on Friday March 7th 2025 at the Hatfield Campus just north of London. This PIM aims to explore the key themes of Transition and Transformation for students embarking on their academic journeys and beyond. The focus here is on the vital roles we play as EAP practitioners in firstly supporting students to successfully bridge the (at times significant) gap to academic study and then enabling students to maximise their potential to make a university education a truly life-changing experience for them.
At the University of Hertfordshire, this is of particular importance as we have a large number of minority ethnic students, both home and international, as well as those from UK postcodes statistically less likely to attend university. We would be very interested in sharing and showcasing what EAP practitioners do in our institution and yours to facilitate student success particularly (but not restricted to) students from what could be loosely described as ‘non-traditional’ backgrounds.
We are delighted to invite spoken presentations, poster presentations and short videos on a variety of topics of relevance here.
Themes of interest to EAP professionals that could be addressed at this PIM may include the following broad topics:
1 Transition: What roles can EAP practitioners play in supporting smooth and successful transitions for students from a variety of backgrounds entering Higher Education?
We would be particularly interested in hearing from colleagues about pedagogically driven initiatives, structures and/or tools that have been put into place to maximise the efficacy of support provided to students as they embark on their chosen degree programmes across the sector. This may include EAP and Academic Skills provision at the Foundation, Pre-sessional and In-sessional stage
2 Transformation: How best can EAP practitioners support students so that university can be a truly transformative experience for them?
For many students, university study can be a means of a changing of expected life trajectories in terms of future employment through knowledge acquisition and skills development. The focus here is on how we as EAP practitioners can facilitate this potentially life-changing experience for our students. This may include how we might embed professional skills in our curricula, centre desirable graduate attributes as outcomes for teaching and learning and assist in the development of future fit graduates.
3 Higher Education Re-imagined: What does transition and transformation mean in our sector?
With memories of the COVID pandemic ‘pivot’ reasonably fresh in our minds, the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence increasingly evident and ever improving Technology Enhanced Learning tools increasing in widespread usage, we welcome contributions from colleagues to share how EAP and Academic Skills provision landscape has changed for the better for them. This particularly concerns how technology has transformed the EAP and Academic Skills landscape, and we are keen to share best practice and hear about successful initiatives within our sector.
CALL FOR PROPOSALS –
Registration
Monday 4th November 2024 (09:00) – Friday 21st Feb 2025 (17:00)
In-person tickets: £100 (£75 for members – discount applied at checkout)
Exhibitor’s tickets: £150
Please note: this is a face-to-face event only.
Refunds are possible up to two weeks prior to an event, however, an administration charge of £5.00 will be deducted from all refunds to cover our costs.
Tea, coffee and pastries will be available on arrival and throughout the day. Lunch will also be provided, and there is a drinks reception until 6pm to end proceedings.
We look forward to welcoming you!
For any questions or requests for further details about this event, please email Jishan Uddin (
k.uddin@herts.ac.uk)
