TLC2025: Call for proposals

Dear colleagues and students

The University of Cape Town’s (UCT) annual Teaching & Learning Conference (TLC) provides an opportunity for the university’s community to focus on teaching and learning. Scheduled to take place from 18 to 19 November 2025 under the title Shaping the Future of Education: Data-driven Strategies for Equity and Success, it will be co-hosted with the Data Analytics for Student Success (DASS) programme.

The TLC2025 aims to build capacity to engage with key questions in higher education, connect stakeholders in the education project, promote critical reflection and inspire innovative teaching practices.

The TLC2025 also aims to provide an opportunity to share, learn and explore how data can inform our practices, focusing on the varied ways data can be created, shared and interpreted to inform the development of equitable educational opportunities for all UCT students. I invite the UCT community – both staff and students – to submit proposals responding to this call.

Data for education

We embrace a broad understanding of "data" encompassing the rich tapestry of information emerging from teaching and learning experiences. Data includes traditional quantitative metrics like assessment marks and learning analytics, but also qualitative insights such as student feedback, classroom observations and visual data like student-created infographics and concept maps. Whether you analyse student writing samples, track participation patterns, use polling tools or observe learning behaviors, you are working with educational data.

In a context where our teaching and learning ecosystem is increasingly mediated by digital and artificial intelligence technologies, data-driven approaches can amplify existing inequities or serve as powerful tools for creating more inclusive learning environments. This conference focuses on how data can be created, shared, analysed and leveraged to create equitable educational opportunities and outcomes for all UCT students.

Critical perspectives

We welcome diverse perspectives on data and its applications in higher education. Beyond technical approaches, we encourage critical engagement with data ethics, data colonialism, Global South perspectives and critiques of datafication processes. We welcome contributions that challenge conventional data narratives, explore alternative methodologies, and propose more equitable approaches to data use in higher education contexts.

As a university situated in the Global South with histories shaped by colonialism and apartheid, we recognise the importance of employing critical frameworks to examine what data we collect, how we interpret it, and whose voices are centered or marginalised in data practices. These perspectives are essential for advancing UCT’s transformation goals and identifying systemic inequalities that affect educational outcomes.

Conference themes

We welcome submissions related to the following:

• Data-Informed Strategies for Teaching and Learning: Responsive and Culturally Relevant Pedagogies
• Data-Informed Strategies for Assessment: Transformative and Inclusive Practices
• Student Voice as Data: Partnership, Participation and Multimodal Perspectives
• Data-Informed Strategies for Student Support: Holistic and Responsive Interventions
• Exploring Data Ethics: Navigating Ethical Dilemmas in Higher Education
• Critical Approaches to Data: Theoretical Frameworks for Transformative Practice
• Wild card submissions

Detailed descriptions of the themes and formats, as well as more information about the conference, can be found on the TLC 2025 page.

• Submit a proposal to present at TLC2025.

Please register to attend the conference, regardless of whether you are submitting a proposal.

I look forward to interacting with you at the 2025 UCT Teaching and Learning Conference.

If you have any further queries, please send an email and a member of the organising team will get back to you.

Sincerely

Professor Brandon Collier-Reed
Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Teaching and Learning

Read previous communications:

• From the UCT Executive
• Campus Announcements