ICALLD (the International Consortium of Academic Language and Learning Developers) is a global community of higher education practitioners working to enhance students’ learning and academic literacies. Our member organizations are from all around the world: Canada, the United Kingdom, Scotland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

One of ICALLD’s key aims is to facilitate professional development opportunities for its members. To that end, the “symposium over time” was born: a conference that occurs in small increments over the year, at varying times and with rotating host organizations. A full record of the symposium presentations is available on our website’s blog; below are some examples.

(ALDinHe, United Kingdom – October 2020) In the first installment of ICALLD’s ‘Symposium-over-time’ for 2020-21, Dr Carina Buckley and Kate Coulson from ALDinHE in the UK were joined over an hour by participants from all five ICALLD nations, based in cities as diverse as Vancouver, Calgary, Hamilton, Wellington, Perth, Glasgow, Leicester and Plymouth. Kate and Carina took a case study approach, presenting their experiences of the last six months and how their institutions have addressed the need to switch to online delivery in two very different ways.

(LSAC, Canada – December 2020) In this uplifting, experiential session, ICALLD participants were introduced to Ryerson University’s Thriving in Action (TiA) program, a unique mind-body-heart-spirit intervention for struggling students. Dr. Diana Brecher and Dr. Deena Kara Shaffer explained TiA’s structure and purposes, how TiA fits into the Canadian academic and wellbeing landscape, and provided opportunities and resources for webinar participants.

(ScotHELD, Scotland – February 2021) ScotHELD’s symposium reflected on student learning development throughout the Covid pandemic. The presentation discussed the benefits and challenges the enforced move to online and hybrid teaching models brought to learning development in Scotland and presented findings from a recent ScotHELD conference on how the profession sought to enhance student learning and wellbeing during these troubled times.

(AALL, Australia – May 2021) Dr Sally Ashton-Hay, Alex Barthel and Dr Amanda Müller spoke about updating the Australian University Register of Academic Language and Learning (ALL) Centres / Units. The aim was to capture the structures in which we work, the contexts in which ALL happens, and the practices that we engage in. The update provided a snapshot in time, revealing a significant increase in Australian tertiary student enrolments in the last ten years, a dramatic reduction in ALL staff employed across the sector, and a proliferation of new services offered particularly online.

(ATLAANZ, New Zealand – June 2021) Learning advisors at Student Learning Te Taiako regularly evaluate our Tertiary Learning Advice Consultations  (TLACs), workshops and programmes, by conducting student surveys and focus groups, together with staff peer-observations and one-minute papers.  In response to recent calls in the literature to go beyond attendance data and perceived student satisfaction to ‘measure’ impact, we have begun using Hamilton et al.’s  (2019) ICALLD evaluation model.