MYFest 2025: Schedule

This session will show how AI is used in Arabic language peer teaching sessions to help peer teachers (i.e. language learners) develop their own activities. It also presents learners’ perceptions of this experience. This session participants will use AI to learn/teach weather vocabulary at A1 level.

This lively session will start with a brief panel conversation exploring how assessment design can actively support student self-regulation. We will consider practical ways to rethink (1) assessment task design, to (2) enhance assessment briefs, and to (3) make feedback more usable for learning. You will be invited to share your reflections, challenges, and examples via an interactive wall. Come ready to think critically and collaboratively about how to make assessment truly work for learners.

Generative AI is transforming the liberal arts, challenging us to protect what matters most: authentic student voices, creativity, and meaningful expression. In this hands-on workshop, we will explore ways to support students in truly owning their work and consider implications for assessment. You’ll leave with practical ideas, new strategies, and inspiration to make your classroom a place where authentic learning is centered, even as the rules keep changing. Don’t just keep up with AI; lead the conversation and empower your students to do the same!

Environmental issues around AI are complex and often opaque. This session explores what is known about the impact of training and use of generative AI systems like large language models and image generation, as well as making practical suggestions for how to teach about these concerns.

Inclusion is not a buzzword. It’s a commitment. A call to restructure our systems, not just our slogans. Too often, academic spaces are built for the “average” student, leaving behind those who think differently, come from different backgrounds, or walk a different learning path.

A gentle, prompt-based writing workshop that encourages creative expression and connection. No experience needed, no pressure to share—just come as you are, write anyway, and leave feeling more grounded and inspired.

Join us for an hour of supporting each other’s writing… quietly… where we will kick off with 5 minutes of inspiration, give everyone about 50 minutes to work on what is important to them right now, and have 5 minutes to celebrate what we’ve accomplished today. This group is dedicated to anyone who is working on a writing project of any kind: you can work on a peer-reviewed paper, grant application, syllabus, even a really tricky email, even your creative work, a poem you want to capture, lyrics for your next song 🙂

Student/staff partnerships are a powerful way to build community, learn together and work collectively towards equity and justice. Building these communities, however, requires reflection on structures and practice that not only support those within them but also actively fight against the systematic barriers inherent in the world. Join a panel of the University of Manchester Library Student Team to discuss how prioritising student agency can act as a foundation for collective action.

In this session, we’ll look at haiku as a mindful writing practice, along with other short-form poetry. Then we will write some poems together. All ages welcome!

In the “Joy Centered Pedagogy” Book Circle, we will be exploring the depth of the ideas from the book in community with other participants. Unlike a traditional book club, the purpose is read deeper, and spend time connecting with the ideas, with each other, and with our work in experiential and engaging ways. Space will be made for introspection, play, laughter, debate, conflict, reflection, and so much more.

This book circle requires separate registration through the google form linked inside. Please note that there is a limited number of participants that could join, so please sign up if you plan to participate.

The DS106 Daily Create is a daily challenge involving 15-20 minutes of creative digital art making and storytelling. Participants will try a few Daily Creates and explore how to incorporate brief creative activities and daily challenges into teaching and learning.

This combination of practical synchronous and asynchronous sessions equip you with tools to immediately apply TIP-based actions with each other, and to develop or adapt an aspect of education to support TIP in your local environment, perhaps through an upcoming class, webinar, student group, library training session, or whatever educational approach you want to take!

This combination of practical synchronous and asynchronous sessions equip you with tools to immediately apply TIP-based actions with each other, and to develop or adapt an aspect of education to support TIP in your local environment, perhaps through an upcoming class, webinar, student group, library training session, or whatever educational approach you want to take!

In this interactive workshop, we will explore how academic writing works as a vehicle for thinking and knowledge-making in the process of research, exploring what is at stake when researchers from across the disciplines delegate the “writing” part of the research process to AI tools. With hands-on activities, we will assess how using AI “to write” might enhance or undermine academic rigor, originality, responsibility, then crating personalized rubrics and flowcharts to guide ethical uses of AI in field-specific ways for ourselves. Scholars of any discipline who want to approach writing with (or without) AI more thoughtfully are invited.

Join us for an hour of supporting each other’s writing… quietly… where we will kick off with 5 minutes of inspiration, give everyone about 50 minutes to work on what is important to them right now, and have 5 minutes to celebrate what we’ve accomplished today. This group is dedicated to anyone who is working on a writing project of any kind: you can work on a peer-reviewed paper, grant application, syllabus, even a really tricky email, even your creative work, a poem you want to capture, lyrics for your next song 🙂

Religion, politics, climate change, migration, injustice, algorithms and more; in the modern world there are many forces that push us towards polarized viewpoints. In this two-part series we will explore what works and what doesn’t in trying to work effectively and ethically with people holding opposing viewpoints. We’ll draw on intercultural theory (a little), conflict resolution (a little) and even practice navigating differences without fear or anger.

Alt tags and text provide a necessary bridge for accessibility, but who is better at making these: handcrafting humans or machine learning bots? Can we move from expanding access to building community? Join us for a playful rumble!

This session will introduce different approaches to inclusive design, exploring both benefits and deficits of different approaches. We will spend time focusing on the principles of Universal Design for Learning and applying these principles to our own educational designs or examples.

In the “Joy Centered Pedagogy” Book Circle, we will be exploring the depth of the ideas from the book in community with other participants. Unlike a traditional book club, the purpose is read deeper, and spend time connecting with the ideas, with each other, and with our work in experiential and engaging ways. Space will be made for introspection, play, laughter, debate, conflict, reflection, and so much more.

This book circle requires separate registration through the google form linked inside. Please note that there is a limited number of participants that could join, so please sign up if you plan to participate.

What can a zany, age-old, theater comedy tradition based on human nature teach us today? Come write, play, and laugh i
as we make a humorous improvised script.