Welcome to the TIRI Conference 2024

'Embracing the Fundamentals: Shaping the Future of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education' 

This year's theme invites academics and professional services colleagues in Higher Education, to pause and reflect on the enduring principles that form the bedrock of effective teaching and learning. As a Higher Education provider, we reaffirm our dedication to a teaching-intensive, research-informed approach central to the University of Bolton's ethos, by revisiting the fundamentals of teaching and learning across four sub-themes focusing on:

 (i) Building Academic Excellence; 

(ii) Broadening Student Empowerment; 

(iii) Beyond Classrooms and; 

(iv) Balancing Assessment and Recognition.

The academic year ahead brings both prospect and promise. Since our last TIRI conference in September 2023 the University has continued its progress towards teaching excellence in so many dimensions. This advance is recognised in The Guardian newspaper, which has ranked us as one of the top 30 universities in the UK. In this standing - which is principally based on an assessment of teaching satisfaction - we now outrank all other new universities in England. My thanks go to all colleagues in all roles at the University in helping us reach this landmark. This should give us the confidence and the spur to redouble our consistent efforts in taking TIRI forward to the next level.  

Building up, however, requires the strongest foundations to be in place right across the board. This is the basis of our conference theme this year: Embracing the Fundamentals. Fundamentals drive success: they underpin the basis of student success and our own continuous improvement of practice. The very notion of continuous improvement (enhancement) implies building on what has already been put in place in the form of robust foundations.  

An independent review of the Office for Students, published in July, indicated a fresh emphasis from the Regulator on continuous improvement of teaching quality at universities, something that would be welcomed when implemented. The new UK Quality Code for HE published in June also puts repeated emphasis, in its ‘key practices’, both on continuous improvement and on the TIRI philosophy of research being applied directly and constructively to teaching.  

Fundamentals apply to both ‘on campus’ and ‘off campus’ provision at the University. Both are equally valued and esteemed at the University. I know that many participants at this conference will be from our valued partners from across UK and beyond. Your presence is a sign of the priority that we give to partner provision and the role we’d wish you to play in the enhancement of our programmes. Moving forward, we will be asking our ‘on campus’ colleagues to help further with the work we do with our partners, so that we can better learn from each other how we can best improve teaching and learning within our respective roles. This will be a key priority in the year ahead.  

The University will reach its 200th anniversary as an institution in 2025, we hope with a new University title that will reflect where we draw our students from and, increasingly, where we educate them within the county. In these 200 hundred years, first as the Bolton Mechanics’ Institute, then as Bolton Technical College, the Bolton Institute of Technology, the Bolton Institute of Higher Education and now as the University of Bolton, the institution has helped transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of people from Bolton, Greater Manchester, across the UK and around the world.  

This impact on our region is genuinely two way: we don’t just transfer knowledge through teaching and applied research to people in the area, we exchange insight and learning with our communities, business partners, and our students. Our academic strategy’s emphasis on engagement with employers and the third sector is reflective of this reality. Medical provision is a classic example of joint working with employers, our new Medical School, which we hope to launch in 12 months time, is founded on the strongest partnership with local NHS Trusts. 

Our Teaching Intensive, Research Informed (TIRI) approach marries well with our increasing engagement with work-based higher education - especially apprenticeships. This engagement is a fundamental for us as a University.  Many more programmes looking ahead will have an apprenticeship element. Maintaining our Good rating from Ofsted this year was a solid demonstration that our fundamentals were in place.  

My thanks again go to those who worked so diligently to make this so. The work needed to ensure that success was salient; we had to work methodically from the ground up to demonstrate that each and every moving part of the learning and teaching experience met the inspection framework’s requirements. In that exercise, from clearly articulating Intent to ensuring Implementation helped us think things through from the fundamentals upwards. Patient work in engaging with our Quality Portal and ensuring accurate and timely attendance records (so that we can follow up in adaptive teaching to our students’ needs) are other examples of the fundamentals that we will be focusing on even more in the coming period. Continuation and completion of programmes is downstream of the work we do in supporting students in this way, which is itself a product of the data we have to identify those who really need that support.  

The topics in this year’s inspiring TIRI conference programme address these themes head on. Whether in keynotes, lightening talks, posters or presentations, the subject matter chosen by colleagues on and off campus is apposite. Programme innovation, adaptive teaching, skills development, and the impact of our research on teaching all feature strongly. It’s gratifying to see the hive of thinking and practice that is going on all around us.   

I wish you a fruitful, thoughtful and enjoyable TIRI 2024 and thank you in advance for your participation and insights. 

Hear what our former presenters have to say about the TIRI conference