Call for Proposals
2025 Pedagogicon
Teaching and Learning Durable Skills
Durable Skills in an Age of AI
A conference in collaboration with the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education
To be held virtually on 20 May 2025.
Hosted by Eastern Kentucky University.
Proposals due: February 14th, 2025
Acceptance Notifications – April 8th, 2025*
Registration Opens – March 24th, 2025*
Registration Deadline – May 6th, 2025*
Registration: Free
2025 Call for Proposals
The conference theme, “Teaching and Learning Durable Skills,” encourages us to consider ways in which classroom environments (in-person, distributed, online, and/or hybrid spaces) can engage students in meaningful and transferable experiences through teaching and learning durable skills. Building on the previous research, scholarship, and innovation that has taken place through the KY Graduate Profile Academy’s focus on the essential employability skills (see Vice, 2024; Bennett, Barnes, Fritsch, & McBreen, 2024) and the National Association of Colleges and Employers Competencies for a Career-Ready Workforce (2024), the 2024 Pedagogicon invites presenters to examine durable skills, those that “improve performance and ensure employees can meaningfully engage with their work, peers, and managers” (Guild, 2024). Presenters are encouraged to share practical approaches to teaching and learning durable skills through practices that are driven and informed by evidence and those that can transfer across higher education institutions and acknowledge the importance and impact of the essential employability skills.
Building on research focused on the essential employability skills, durable skills are highly sought after in the workplace. They are foundational professional skills considered to improve workplace performance while also ensuring that employees are able to engage with work, colleagues, peers, and supervisors. They might include those skills that are focused on people, such as managing yourself (time management), decision making (problem solving, analytical thinking, creativity), empathy, and working with managers and leaders (collaboration).
This conference invites presenters to share
- exceptional pedagogical strategies, theories, or practices that might enhance teaching and learning of durable skills;
- examples that further describe the problem of students leaving academic programs with limited essential employability skills that identify gaps in student preparation and models for assessing, understanding, or interpreting these findings (e.g., feedback from internships, co-ops, preceptors, and employers);
- faculty development approaches or recommendations for student engagement and experiential learning for durable skill development;
- instructional, course, or course (re)design models that teach students durable skills;
- ways essential employability skills lead to the teaching and learning of durable skills; or
- development, implementation, and success (and/or failures) of curricula that teach durable skills.
Presenters are encouraged to engage participants through interactive activities, demonstrations, or discussions.
Threads might include but are not limited to:
- Approaches for teaching and learning durable skills in an age of AI;
- Methods and approaches for incorporating durable skills to facilitate student engagement and experiential learning;
- New or emerging concepts, definitions, and practices that advance understandings of durable skill development and transferability in workplace contexts;
- Strategies that promote student engagement in durable skill development amid changing higher education teaching and learning environments (across on-ground, online, hybrid, and distributed educational spaces);
- Use(s) of technology, media, or tools to enhance durable skill development in a variety of academic and workplace contexts;
- Creative and innovative instructional techniques that engage students in durable skill development;
- Teaching and learning strategies that promote durable skill development in the classroom and beyond;
- Faculty development initiatives, programs, and processes that have facilitated successful durable skill development to enhance teaching and student success;
- Student, student-faculty, or student-faculty-staff partnership perspectives focused on developing and sustaining durable skill development; and
- New approaches for employing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) methods to enhance durable skill initiatives.
Presenters will also have the opportunity to submit their work for consideration in the annual Proceedings, to be published in early 2026.
Submit proposals online here.
View the proposal review rubric.
References
Bennett, F., Barnes, P., Fritsch, D., & McBreen, A. (2024). Employability: Skills for work, skills for life. 2023 Pedagogicon Conference Proceedings. https://encompass.eku.edu/pedagogicon/2023/graduate-profile/1
Guild. (2024). How to build the skills of tomorrow. guild.com/durable-skills
National Association of Colleges and Employers Competencies for a Career-Ready Workforce. (2024). Competencies for a career-ready workforce. www.naceweb.org/docs/default-source/default-document-library/2024/resources/nace-career-readiness-competencies-revised-apr-2024.pdf?sfvrsn=1e695024_6
Vice, J. (2024). The Kentucky Graduate Profile. 2023 Pedagogicon Conference Proceedings. https://encompass.eku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1110&context=pedagogicon