Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 11 Summer 2019 | Page 23

the last five years, it was great to see so many of
the innovations being applied as educational tools
to service theory-informed research rather than
the talks being “about” the innovations….a real
step change in the sector of the last few years and
something that came across clearly on the day.
It will perhaps not be a surprise to hear also that,
given the theme of the event, there were a few more
challenging presentations to hear and that some of
these discourses offered honest insight into very
difficult issues, be they harrowing anecdotes around
hate-fueled prejudice or deeply sad narrative-driven
stories of human vulnerability, these presentations
helped to provide a nexus of discussions, questioning
and sharing to explore the “social” reality of our time
and served, in my opinion to hammer home that
classic Huxley quote spoken on radio in 1956, “The
price of liberty, and even of common humanity, is
eternal vigilance.”
The remainder of this section of JADE will offer a
number of guest authors the opportunity to share
with you their own reflections from parts of the
event they identified with and, once they have
offered a flavor of that, we present the entire run of
submitted abstracts as a conference proceeding to
the event as well as a benchmark against which both
we ourselves and others can use to inform future
similar events.
Guest Author - Reflection
As a visiting academic at Keele, I was a ‘parasite’ at
the Learning and Teaching Conference, as my stay
here is short and the knowledge gained can be
operationalized only when back at home. However,
the conference provided a tremendous opportunity
for me to reflect on what we are doing and how
can be improved at my home institution, Faculty of
Medicine, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka.
The theme of the conference, social learning,
was an endeavor that we have been engaged in,
without giving much thought as medical education
is inherently social. However, one of the questions
posed by the key-note speaker, Dr. Simon Thomson
resonated well with me. In this era of expanding
knowledge, easy access to information, possibility
of screen capture of lectures, posting lecture notes
online along with the intended learning outcomes,
“what can I give the students over and above those?”.
This will definitely change the way that I will look in
to organizing lectures in future.
In the learning culture that I come from, there is a
considerable perceived distance between the staff
and students. Things are improving but at the very
slow pace that is typical of academia. The idea of
getting to know learners before commencing the
actual learning process, is something that is worthy
of exploring in this context, to narrow this “gap”
between the staff and the students.
All the sessions that followed, gave ample brilliant
ideas that can be modified an applied to various
learning sessions, particularly in small groups and
with flexible learning patterns. However, even for
curricula such as medicine, that are packed to the
brim, there were still ideas that may be “tweaked and
used”.
A recurring theme in the conference was how
important physical proximity is in social learning or
in learning for that matter, given that humans are
social beings. I wonder though, will this remain so in
the generations to come? When the current fixation
and reliance on online connectivity impacts human
‘evolution’, what role with physical proximity play in
learning.
Veranja Liyanapathirana
Visiting Academic,
School of Life Sciences,
Keele University and
Senior Lecturer,
Department of Microbiology,
Faculty of Medicine,
University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
Re f l e c t i o n s o n K ee l e Lea r n i n g a n d Tea c h i n g C o n f e r e n c e
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