IH Academic Management & Trainers Conference 2024
What is it?
I believe I speak for the majority of International House Directors of Studies when I say a highlight of our working calendar falls in the middle of January each year. We wait eagerly for registration to open and to receive details about our annual IH ‘AMT’ conference and look forward to networking, sharing and learning together over three days of workshops, plenaries and a variety of activities.
Who’s it for?
This year’s conference certainly didn’t disappoint and perhaps even exceeded my already high expectations. The event saw around 100 International House academic managers and trainers get together from literally all over the globe - as well as six colleagues from IH Portugal schools and many others from across the UK and Europe I had the chance to mix with other professionals from as far away as Central America and even Australia! This wealth of knowledge and variety of contexts leads to rich conversation and opportunities to see current English Language Teaching trends and issues through many different lenses and perspectives, which is what makes our IH community so valuable.
How do we all benefit?
In terms of formal sessions, I was lucky enough to learn much about the current status of AI in education and leading on from the conference we will be implementing our own IH COSC AI policy to ensure we keep up with this ever advancing technology while keeping student safeguarding at the forefront of everything we do. We also had many sessions around diversity & inclusion, adding value, sustainability, kindness and positivity, which all gave me lots of food for thought. Over the coming weeks I'll be meeting with our staff in Coimbra and leading training in these areas so our whole IHCOSC family can see and feel the benefits of my learning. Lots of work to do and I can’t wait to share it with our students.
