THE (UN)CONFERENCE APPROACH

HELTASA aims to bring together academic and professional staff as well as higher education practitioners in and around Southern African higher education to engage, discuss and debate around learning and teaching matters. This engagement is underpinned by HELTASA’s core values, namely collegiality, professionalism, quality, equity, creativity, criticality, and innovation. Since 2021, HELTASA has embarked on a journey to rethink our annual conference experiences and adopted varied approaches that encourage equitable and socially inclusive participation. Using the decolonial gesture of ‘un’ to question the traditional and the norm, we aim to create more inclusive dialogic spaces that invite more interaction from all participants. Our focus this year is more about conversation rather than presentation. In this way we hope to foster the participation of diverse voices and perspectives to enable deeper transformative insights towards alternative approaches. Read more about how HELTASA embarked on a journey of methodological disruption of scholarly participation in a recent Special Issue of Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning.

These methodologies aim to create an open space to share, critically reflect, be creative and develop innovative approaches to learning and teaching through collaboration, scholarly conversations, challenging our taken for granted assumptions. A participant driven approach allows for engagement, teamwork, and an emphasis on contributions from every participant. An (Un)Conferencing approach encourages formal and informal conversations around a collective space (such as the baobab tree). We encourage participants to create or join conversations during the event.

The (Un)Conference will include a focus on:

• Workshops: These will be co-facilitated by teams of the hosting institutions on Day 1 (26 November): HELTASA, University of Limpopo and University of Venda.
• Provocation: We will start each day with a provocation by invited panel members or speakers. There will be time for small group discussions after the provocations.
• Mini harvesting: Mini harvesting entails collated feedback and responses that are captured by participants in a Padlet, in online chat or in other ways that reflect critical issues and ideas that have emerged.
• Parallel tracks: Each session will consist of a few presentations. Presenters are encouraged to think about ways of presenting without PowerPoint slides. Presenters of posters and lightning talks will also be included in the conversation for a parallel track. These parallel sessions will include critical dialogues and workshops.
• Artistic showcasing parallel tracks: Presenters will have the opportunity to showcase their creativity and storytelling in diverse ways.
• Open mic session: an interesting agentic space for participants to voice their thoughts. Participants can form small groups to engage in scholarly conversations in a relaxed and informal manner. Questions/ topics will be sourced from participants or emerge from conversations during the (Un)Conference.
• The “closing the loop” session on the final day allows for a facilitated reflective and reflexive discussion