Writing a blog post about our experience at the ABS (Association of Business Schools’) annual conference on Learning, Teaching and Student Experience, 27-29 April 2015, has proven to be a great way to fill in the time waiting for a plane back from York, UK!

Louise (Preget), Deborah (Taylor) and I (Milena Bobeva) had been to York to present the work from the first stage of the Fusion project on Reverse Mentoring (RvM) in Higher Education. This student:staff co-creation/co-production project examines RvM, a strategy where younger, less experienced employees share their knowledge and expertise with a more senior person. Our team has studied industry practices as viewed and experienced by our placement and post-placement students.

The conference was a brilliant opportunity for academics within UK Business Schools to share and showcase best practice in a number of key streams including internationalisation, blended learning, the changing student and employability. Bournemouth University had a strong lobby there with five academics and three publications, including two by Dr Sukanya Ayatakshi, who presented some assessment and engagement practices on the fully online International Business and Management undergraduate programme.

There was unanimous agreement amongst the BU team that the most interesting session at the conference was the talk on ‘Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge’ delivered by Prof. Ray Land from Durham University. It stressed the importance of challenging our habitual practices as both learners and educators and made us recognise RvM as a threshold concept. Further detail of this seminal work is available here and on this website.
For those interested in finding out more about reverse mentoring and the findings of the Fusion project, we will be running a session at the Festival of Learning: 3-5pm on the 14^th July 2015 in PG142-144.