A fully online experience for the eSTEeM Annual Conference

6th May 2020

In light of current circumstances, the eSTEeM Management Team were forced to think creatively about how to deliver this year’s annual conference. Planning for the event was in the advanced stages and a programme containing 60 abstracts was fully formed. Cancelling or postponing the event and not having the opportunity to bring together the eSTEeM community, would have been an extremely difficult decision to take. After careful consideration, and much investigation into ways of moving the conference to an online format, we settled on using Microsoft Teams. A number of test sessions were held where Teams was put through its paces and impressed us with its features. One of our favourites, the ability to appear in a galaxy far, far away or virtually anywhere with the background effect setting, not to mention the stable video function and automatic closed captions.  

And so with over 240 registrants, the 9th eSTEeM Annual Conference took place on the 29-30 April totally online and retained its original format with plenaries, parallel sessions, workshops, Ignite-style presentations and poster presentations. The Opening Workshop facilitated by our colleagues in the Access, Participation and Success Team, was attended by over 170 online participants and generated some very powerful engagement addressing issues around the BAME degree awarding gap. 

We were delighted to welcome Professor Phil Gravestock (University of Wolverhampton) and Dr Helen May (York St John University) as our keynotes on day 1 and day 2 respectively.

Delegates were invited to vote for the best poster and congratulations go to David Conway, Janet Hughes and Christine Gardner who won for their poster Are virtual insight visits an effective way to engage learners?

This year’s conference saw the 3rd eSTEeM Scholarship Projects of the Year Awards.  Prizes were awarded for projects in two categories; Innovative/Original Approach to Teaching and Enhancing the Student Experience. Many congratulations go to the following eSTEeM project teams –

Innovative/Original Approach to Teaching

• Winner – Project title: Online journal clubs in distance higher education: an opportunity to develop skills and community?  Project team: Fiona Moorman, Karen New, Kathryn Fox and Hazel Church
• Highly Commended – Project title: Use of STACK to generate formative assessment for Level 3 pure mathematics. Project team: Hayley Ryder and Joe Kyle

Enhancing the Student Experience

• Winner – Project title:  Evaluating the accessibility of an alternative format of module materials in Maths & Stats. Project team: Chris Hughes, Chetz Colwell, John Clarke, Kaye Williams and Alison Bromley
• Highly Commended – Project title: Active learning in synchronous online tuition: increasing student interaction. Project team: Katrine Rogers, Claudi Thomas and Hilary Holmes

To read more about the projects please click the project titles.

Despite some technical glitches, together with the huge challenge of converting a face-to-face event into an online format in such a short space of time, overall the conference was a great success and has been extremely well received by those who attended. Thanks again to all of our presenters for their willingness to transition to an online format and our delegates for bearing with us during the hitches.

Finally, may we say a huge thank you to the following people who were an enormous help to the eSTEeM Management Team leading up to and during the conference – Ben Hawkridge, Keith Hamilton, Sam Hazell, Hannah Quaintrell, Babette Oliver and Amy Sharpe, we salute you!   

Images: Top: Opening Workshop screenshot; bottom: Parallel Session H presentation screenshot by Shailey Minocha.

To view the PowerPoint presentations and watch replays of the keynotes, please visit the conference website.