The BILT Conference 2025
This year’s BILT Conference, held on Wednesday 25 June in the Victoria Rooms, was as ever, a landmark and highlight in the educational year. In packed sessions we focused on Education for a Changing World.
James Norman (CADE), BILT’s most prolific blogger, kicked off in style, and applied his experience of working in architectural design to the challenges and opportunities we face. Recognising the importance of drawing on all types of disciplinary expertise to address the climate emergency, James argued powerfully for a holistic university, genuinely inclusive and genuinely collaborative – subject groups collaborating across the university, with other universities and with our cities. James presented an optimistic ‘CORK’ model of the world we can shape: Chaotic, recognising that chaotic moments are often places of birth; Opportunistic, seeking to look beyond obstacles and make the impossible a reality; Reflective, to include critical reflection; and Kind, noting the importance of being kind to others and kind to the environment. James aspires to see future students as scientific predictors, system ‘seers’ who can challenge the barriers, practical and relational across multiple boundaries, always driven by values and ethics. This is a call to create a university without silos in which we all recognise the strengths that others can contribute.
In the final keynote, Anke Schwittay (Sussex) discussed the ‘critical-creative pedagogy’ she has pioneered based on a commitment to critical hope. Her students have been applying these tools to develop values-based activism in practical ways.
The closing panel drew these themes out further. James and Anke stressed the importance of teaching staff continuing to educate and upskill themselves. Ros O’Leary asked panellists to consider how we can encourage our students to remain hopeful. James stressed that hope was essential and there was a consensus that as staff we need to share our own vulnerability and to show courage. Tansy Jessop emphasised that students and staff are all part of the same community of scholars, and that solutions arise when we work together. Esther Ng, BILT’s student fellow for AI, highlighted applied approaches to reach practical solutions. The panellists also reflected on the good seeds we have already planted – particularly in co-creation with students and our adoption of Ron Barnett’s knowing, acting, being approach in curriculum design. But there is scope to go further: James would love to get students across the university, far beyond Engineering, all working on active steps to reduce the university’s carbon emissions. As he points out, every subject area can contribute: we need to overcome barriers and learn the languages of other disciplines.
Besides the plenary sessions, the day included a rich diet of insights from the wide array of BILT projects. Colleagues reported on how they are instituting active learning approaches and changing assessment types to engage and motivate students. Numerous projects presented empirical data from student surveys. To quote just one: Miyambo Kabwe, a BILT Student Fellow, reported from a small survey that 56% of students believed their assessments did not prepare them for the future. A sobering thought, but balanced by the hope and optimism of the new approaches being trialled and evaluated in different ways across the university to ensure that our teaching and assessments are inclusive, active, motivating and forward-facing. There was time over the excellent lunch, provided by Source Catering and sponsored by Echo360, to review posters with the key outcomes of the BILT research projects from the past year.
If you missed it, you can read far more about the sessions at the conference website: BILT Conference 2025 – Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching Blog. We’re extremely fortunate to have BILT as such an enriching resource in the university. Many congratulations to Ros O’Leary and her team on this year’s event and here’s to the next one – not to be missed.
