Dr Hasti Abbasi, Senior Lecturer Learning Futures at Deakin University, shares insights from the design of the University’s 2025 Teaching and Learning Conference as a space for inclusive academic development.

This blog introduces a case study of good practice from Deakin University’s 2025 Teaching and Learning Conference, where deliberate design approaches shaped the conference as a platform for inclusive academic development. Working within established institutional priorities and governance structures, the conference design drew on principles of inclusive and distributed leadership to support a shared and developmental experience for more than 300 participants. The lessons emerging from this process offer a practical model that may be adapted in other higher education contexts. 

Aligning conference themes with institutional priorities 

A key design decision was aligning the 2025 conference theme ‘Beyond Fifty Years of Education: Innovation and Collaboration for a Changing World’ with Deakin’s broader educational priorities. This alignment helped situate emerging themes such as GenAI, assessment renewal, equity and codesign within a shared institutional narrative. 

When themes are meaningfully aligned, they do more than structure the program; they help educators interpret strategy in their own practice. At Deakin, this alignment created coherence across sessions and ensured that discussions moved beyond abstract policy into practical, discipline specific considerations. Our approach to positioning the keynote – supported by a preconference interview – further strengthened this coherence and helped participants see how their work connects to Deakin’s strategic direction. 

This approach reinforced a central insight: conferences can function as sensemaking spaces where institutional priorities become actionable through dialogue and shared reflection. 

Making distributed leadership visible and developmental 

Distributed leadership has long been recognised as essential to sustainable academic development. Rather than resting with a small group of senior experts, leadership emerges through shared responsibility and collaboration. The conference already had an established governance structure (Chair, steering committee and cross faculty selection committee) but we sought to make leadership more visible and actively developmental. 

One intentional shift was opening session chair roles to early career and education focused academics. Traditionally held by senior leaders, these roles provided emerging academics with visible leadership opportunities, collegial facilitation experience, and cross faculty networks. This change did not alter the role’s function; it simply broadened who could participate in leadership. 

The response was overwhelmingly positive. Early career academics embraced their roles with confidence, and feedback showed that these opportunities strengthened their sense of belonging and professional identity. By reframing session chairing as academic development and not just administration, we embedded leadership growth into the fabric of the conference. 

Supporting diverse forms of pedagogical scholarship 

Teaching and learning conferences must recognise the diverse ways educators develop and share knowledge. Scholarship emerges in many forms from reflective practice to early exploratory ideas and formal SoTL research so a single presentation format cannot accommodate this diversity. 

To support varied contributions, the 2025 conference offered multiple formats, including: 

• 12-minute papers 
• panel discussions 
• lightning talks 
• live demonstrations and case-based sessions. 

This diversity of format created an environment where educators could present work at different stages and in ways that suited their message. Shorter formats encouraged clarity and focus; panels enabled multi-voice discussion of complex issues; live demonstrations allowed participants to see teaching practice in action. 

Feedback indicated that this variety broadened perspectives, sparked new conversations and better reflected the richness of teaching across the university. 

Designing for inclusivity and cognitive manageability 

Inclusivity must be embedded in every aspect of conference design, beyond compliance and toward meaningful participation. This includes recognising the needs of disabled and neurodivergent colleagues, and designing environments that reduce cognitive load and decision fatigue. 

Key design choices included: 

• five-minute pauses between presentations 
• 10-minute transition times between parallel sessions 
• careful distribution of topics to avoid overwhelming choices 
• an accessible, high contrast slide template for presenters. 

These small decisions created a more manageable and humane pace, enabling participants to sustain engagement throughout the day. Feedback highlighted that participants felt less rushed, more able to reflect and more confident navigating the program. 

This reinforced a critical insight: inclusivity is felt most strongly in pacing, clarity and the ease with which people can participate and not only in formal accessibility statements. 

Conferences as collective academic development 

Ultimately, the case study demonstrates that a teaching and learning conference can function as a form of collective academic development. When intentionally designed, conferences: 

• build shared understanding across disciplines 
• strengthen relationships and leadership pathways 
• connect strategy to practice 
• create a culture of reflection and collaboration. 

Importantly, the value extends beyond the event itself. Each conference cycle becomes an opportunity to learn, refine and iterate – mirroring the ongoing nature of teaching and academic development more broadly. 

Looking ahead 

As the conference continues to evolve, one principle remains central: when we design intentionally, teaching and learning conferences become more than events – they become shared spaces where communities come together to imagine, shape, and lead the future of education. 

Read the case study Designing teaching and learning conferences as inclusive academic development: distributed leadership in practice in full.