Information

This information is for registered delegates for BAICE 2022. Please note that registration is now closed.

Where we are

The conference will be held at the University of Edinburgh, Pollock Halls complex. The main conference hub will be South Hall (EH16 5AR), with break out rooms in the John McIntyre and St Leonards buildings (a 3 minute walk away). The discounted conference hotels (The Scholar and The Scott) are on the same site.

If you are attending the Compare Writing for Publication Workshop on Monday 12th September, this will be held at a different part of the campus – Moray House School of Education. More specific details will be shared by the Compare team.

Getting here

Pollock Halls is approximately a 10 minute drive from Edinburgh Waverley train station and a 30 minute drive from the airport. There will be plenty of taxis at both. Buses run regularly between the train station and the Pollock Halls complex and take around 20 minutes. You can plan a bus journey on the Lothian Buses website.

You may be aware that a rail strike has been announced for Thursday 15th September. We recognise this will cause disruption for many. We have set up an online conference community board for people to collaborate and share information to help minimise disruption, the link to the board has been included in an email to all delegates.

On arrival

Please sign in at the registration desk when you arrive. Here you will receive your conference bag and name badge. The registration desk will be in the Holland foyer in South Hall. The registration desk will be open from 9am each morning.

Posters and exhibitions

Posters and exhibitions will be displayed in South Hall for the duration of the conference. This is adjacent to where registration and coffee breaks will be, so please feel free to browse the displays and talk to the authors and exhibitors.

Tech

Wifi will be available at the conference venue. Joining details will be available at the registration desk.

All break-out rooms will have a laptop. If you are using a Power Point presentation, please bring it on a memory stick and upload it in advance of the session. Rooms will be open 15 minutes before sessions begin to facilitate this. Please do not change any settings on the laptops as this can cause issues for presenters and delay sessions.

The laptops will be connected to a large screen with speakers, if needed.

Live-streaming and photography

For the first time we will be live-streaming our three keynote events. Thank you to Cambridge University Press and Assessment whose sponsorship is supporting the live-streaming. The keynotes will be available on our website (live, and later archived), so please share the link with colleagues who are unable to attend. Some symposia will also be live-streamed (see full programme for details). 

While the focus of the filming will be the speakers, the audience may appear in some of the footage. If you do not wish to feature, there will be volunteers stationed at the doors who will be able to guide you to seating areas that will be out of shot.

We will have a conference photographer. If you would prefer not to appear in social media photographs of the conference, please let us know at the registration desk.

Podcasts

The BAICE ECR team is bringing their podcast to the conference! They will be on the look-out for people to participate in quick-fire mini interviews for a special edition of the podcast. You can also sign-up on the community board in South Hall.

Food and drink

Lunch is included in the conference package. Also included are tea/coffee and danish pastries each morning with registration, tea/coffee and biscuits at morning break, and tea/coffee and cake at afternoon breaks.

You may remember that we planned for BAICE 2022 to be a vegetarian conference. Because we have a higher number of delegates than anticipated, lunch will now be served in the restaurant in the John McIntyre Building (where several of our break-out rooms are). As other conferences will also be using this restaurant, it is too complicated to only serve vegetarian dishes to BAICE delegates. As a result, a range of vegetarian and non-vegetarian options will be available. The restaurant is also better able to cater for a wider range of dietary requirements, and means we will be able to sit down to eat.

Coffee breaks will be in the Kirkland room in South Hall.

If you have a ticket for the gala dinner, a three-course vegan meal will be served. Other dietary requirements indicated at registration will be catered for. The gala dinner will be in South Hall.

Gala Dinner

The Gala Dinner will be in South Hall on Wednesday 14th September. Please aim to be seated by 7:30pm. Six tables at the front will be removed after dinner to allow the venue to set up the dance floor. This will be indicated on the tables. Apart from reserved seating for our international keynote speaker, there will not be allocated seats, so please sit anywhere.

After dinner we will welcome the fantastic Science Ceilidh Band (www.scienceceilidh.com) who will teach us some traditional Scottish dances (with a twist!). We recommend comfortable shoes.

There is no formal dress code for the Gala Dinner – please feel free to dress up if you wish, but all are welcome to all BAICE events in whatever they feel most themselves in.

There will be wine, soft drinks and water on the tables: thank you to The University of Glasgow for sponsoring this! There will be a bar before and after dinner. Please note that the bar will accept card payments only.

Creative sessions

You may have seen that we have introduced a new ‘creative session’ element in the programme and we have a really exciting line-up of interactive sessions involving storytelling, collage, gamification, creative writing… and so on. We’ve been promoting these on the website over the past few weeks – so have a look at the BAICE blog if you would like to have a sneak peek into what’s in store.

Another project we have is the BAICE Collaborative Quilt. The concept is that there will be a space at the conference where there is a table with pieces of fabric and fabric pens. Delegates will be asked to share a message about education partnerships by writing (or drawing) it onto one of the pieces of fabric. There will be sessions across the three days where people can come and sit and sew these pieces of fabric into a quilt. This will provide a calm space where people can talk about partnerships in education (inspired by what is on the pieces of fabric) in a ‘different’ way (i.e. informal, hands-on, less-hierarchical, working together to create something). Some people might need a break from the formal sessions, some might want to meet some new people, some might just love sewing. You don’t need to be an expert at sewing as instructions will be provided: all will be welcome to join the sewing collective over the three days.

If you have any fabric lying around that you could donate to the BAICE Collaborative Quilt Project, please bring it along! We’ll be cutting it into A4 squares.

Extra-curricular activities and community board

In the Kirkland room in South Hall there will be a community board to encourage shared experiences and extra-curricular activities. All will be welcome to contribute to this. For example: if you would like to walk up to the top of Arthur’s Seat but don’t want to go by yourself, there will be a sign-up for a group trip. If you would like to go for an early morning run and meet some new running friends, you can arrange a meeting place on the community board. If you would like to talk about Wenger over a whisky, phenomenology over a pizza, curriculum over a visit to the castle, or anything else, the community board will help you!

There is also a fantastic public swimming pool on site.

COVID safety

We recognise that this may be the first large in-person event people have attended for several years, and we understand that this may make some people anxious. 

While all restrictions have been lifted in Scotland, we encourage pre-conference testing where possible, and encourage anyone who would like to wear a face mask to do so. Please be sensitive to and respectful of people’s choices. Please review the University of Edinburgh’s COVID website, and the Scottish Government’s COVID website before you travel to the conference in case of any last-minute changes. Please do not attend the conference if you are suffering from symptoms of COVID-19.

Scotland has a ‘Distance Aware’ scheme where you can wear a badge or lanyard with the distance shield on it and it indicates, without you having to explain, that you prefer to keep your distance. You can read more about this scheme here. Please be conscious of and responsive to anyone at the conference wearing a Distance Aware badge. If you are not based in Scotland you can download the template for the badge at the link above.

Social media #

The conference hashtag is #BAICE2022 – please tweet!

If you are taking photographs where people are clearly visible, please check with them before you post online.