ACSME 2024 – wrap up and thank you

ACSME 2024 saw the conference return to Canberra after a break of 11 years, this time hosted by the University of Canberra with a UC, ANU and UNSW Canberra committee. We were delighted to see that this was the biggest ACSME since pre-COVID conferences, with a substantial increase in abstracts submitted and more attendees in person. This was a great opportunity to catch up with colleagues but also necessitated four concurrent sessions, leading to some tough choices about what to attend!

The conference theme of “Belonging: the centre of the student experience” was evident throughout the conference as we discussed student belonging from a range of perspectives as well as our own experiences of belonging as education-focussed staff. Louise Ainscough (UQ) mentioned a LinkedIn group for education-focussed staff, providing a useful networking opportunity. The conference showcased work on the big issues in science education, from AI and assessment to empowering educators to virtual reality, labs and supporting First Nations students to succeed in science.  Since we were in Canberra, we welcomed Andrew Leigh (Federal Member for Fenner), as one of our invited speakers. He talked to us about the value of a statistics education and then fielded some quite challenging questions.

There were further tough choices between Discipline Day morning workshops, which covered competency grading, climate action in science curricula, First Nations curricula and leadership. After a pizza lunch, we split into discipline groups, with chemistry, biology, physics and maths all organising sessions.

We thank the committee for all their hard work in putting the conference together, our keynote speakers and all participants for the great atmosphere and discussions during the conference. We hope to see everyone at ACSME 2025, hosted by the University of Melbourne. Information will be available on the ACDS website soon.

The ACSME 2024 conference proceedings are available online.