On this page you will find special events put on as part of our support for managers during the Covid-19 crisis
Call for proposals
LAMSIG Online Festival of Ideas
New Approaches for New Realities
March 20th, 2021
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This March, LAMSIG will hold an all-day online festival of ideas to look at the new management and leadership strategies we will all need in order to be able to create and sustain the organizational and other changes that will stand us in good stead in the future. The audience of the symposium, we hope, will be ELT managers and leaders from around the globe
Talks, workshops, discussions and panels will take place over three two-hour time slots to ensure that everyone in the world will be able to attend at least some of the event.
We are looking for presenters who can offer valuable insights to the wider community of ELT managers on any topic connected to the theme of New Approaches for New Realities.
Preference will be given to talks that address the conference theme directly. Some possible areas that you might choose to present on include: leadership, managing strategy and innovation; managing tools and technology; new course development, quality assurance, organisational agility and resilience, finance and marketing, developing and training managers and staff, dealing with change, hybrid or online teams, performance management, staff well-being, and others
To put your name forward as a speaker and for details regarding slots and timing, please go to this link. Proposal deadline – January 31st, 2021
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Panel Discussions on “What Now?”
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
As part of our Covid-19 response in support of managers in language schools, we are delighted to present a series of panel discussions in June and July, on Business Management and Academic Management issues. These panels will feature a group of well regarded experts from different contexts and different areas of specialisation.
Panel 4: TTEdSig Discussion hosted by LAMSIG
Friday 24th July 2020, 10am UK time
Panellists: Adam Banstra, Dr. Bahar Gun, Prof. Dr. Birsen Tutunis, Dr.Kalyan Chattopadhyay, Tom Garside
Moderator: Burcu Tezcan Unal (TTEd SIG coordinator)
This is a fourth discussion panel hosted by LAMSIG to support school leaders and academic managers during the Covid-19 crisis, this time in collaboration with the Teacher Training and Education IATEFL SIG.
Some of the topics we are going to discuss:
- Adam Banstra – Observation of online teachers
- Dr. Bahar Gun – The role of trainers in an online INSET workshop festival
- Prof. Dr. Birsen Tutunis – Teaching in-service (student) teachers online
- Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay – Online learning: accountability and quality control
- Tom Garside – Emerging trends in online teacher education
Panel 3: Business Management
Friday 10th July 2020, 10am UK time
From small business/school owners and managers to CEOs and departments heads – What’s the new normal?
Panellists: Dr Christina Giannikas, Justin Quinn, Dr Pamela Humphreys, Jane Dancaster
Moderator: Liam Brown
This panel has now taken place and can be viewed here
This third in a series of discussion-and-question led IATEFL LAMSIG Webinars provides a forum for ELT academic managers and stakeholders to connect with a panel of expert academic practitioners and ELT business owners to share our understanding and response to Covid-19 and how we prepare for the future. How much of our varied ELT business will return to our familiar “normal” and how much will be a “new normal”?
Some questions we’ll consider:
How has Covid 19 allowed or forced us to step back and look at how we do things?
How will the sales, marketing and customer facing operations change?
What is the impact now of the rapid pivoting from face to face to on-line?
Does this pivot offer new competitive advantages to individual institutions and what needs to be done to maintain high quality teaching and service?
In the higher education sector are there opportunities now to innovate and push for higher standards and efficiencies in our programmes, back-office systems and processes?
What does all this mean for our people and how do we balance the human dimension with new business realities?
Panel 2: Academic Management
Friday 26th June 2020, 10am UK time
This panel has now taken place and can be viewed here
Panellists: Sandy Millin, Nik Peachey, Sandra Pitronaci, Josh Round
Moderator: Jenny Johnson
This second question-and-discussion led Webinar provides a forum for ELT academic managers to connect with a panel of expert academic practitioners to understand and share our understanding and response to Covid-19 and how we prepare for the future. How much will return to our familiar “normal” and how much will be a “new normal”?
Questions we’ll consider:
- The academic implications of restrictions on physical distancing, gatherings/class size
- Implications for the academic manager in terms of supporting teachers, performance management, CPD programmes and other aspects
- The pedagogic implications of moving to online, virtual and flipped learning for teachers and students
- The value of current course content in the virtual sphere – how good is what you’re using?
- Implications of moving to online and virtual teaching and how you’ll make stick what you’ve learned from the “test-and-learn” implementation phase for students and teachers during the recovery and beyond.
- How will the new IT partnerships, new learning platforms and digital delivery and customer service you are now engaged with develop?
Panel 1: Business Management
Friday 12th June 2020, 10am UK time
Panellists: Michelle Ocriciano, George Pickering, Adrian Underhill, Julie Wallis
Moderator: Liam Brown
This panel has now taken place and the recording can be viewed from our members page
This question-and-discussion led Webinar provides a forum for ELT academic managers to connect with a panel of expert practitioners to understand and share our understanding and response to Covid-19 and how we prepare for the future. The panel discussion will help us understand what the ELT business landscape will look like post Covid as we move from rapid response to a possible large scale strategic shift impacting us all.
Questions we’ll consider:
- The implications of restrictions on physical distancing, gatherings/class size and travel, building confidence
- Working to safeguard staff, students and customers, and the workplace
- Working with new business conditions and operations and changes in customer habits and preferences
- Working to step change the business online presence and ability to market, sell and service customers online
- Working with virtual teams – efficient and sustainable; engaged and focused
- Focusing on HR issues – recruitment and retention of staff and updating
- Employee policies around medical support and sick leave, contract types and salaries
Q&A Session with Sarah Mercer
Wednesday 29th April, 3pm UK time
We are delighted to be joined by Sarah Mercer for this special Q&A session on the topic of wellbeing (for managers, teachers, and students). Sarah is the co-author of Teacher Wellbeing (OUP, 2020). Check out her blog post on the subject for OUP here
The recording of this Q&A session can be found here
Sarah Mercer is Professor of Foreign Language Teaching at the University of Graz, Austria, where she is Head of ELT methodology. Her research interests include all aspects of the psychology surrounding the foreign language learning experience. She is the author, co-author and co-editor of several books in this area. She has been Principal Investigator on various funded research projects. She is currently vice-president of the International Association for the Psychology of Language Learning (IAPLL). In 2018, she was awarded the Robert C Gardner Award for excellence in second language research by the International Association of Language and Social Psychology (IALSP).