We are pleased that we can now confirm the dates and venues. The 2026 conference will be held in the Teaching & Learning Centre in Durham. For a change, the evening conference dinner will be held in a venue we last used in 2001 - the Dining Room of Hatfield College (a converted Georgian Coaching Inn on the historic Bailey).
The optional pre-conference workshops will be on the afternoon of Wednesday the 22nd of April in the Teaching & Learning Centre from 2 to 5pm. The full two day conference will be on Thursday the 23rd and Friday the 24th of April, with the evening conference dinner on Thursday night.
Little things that make a big difference
Recent discussions about technology and education have been dominated by generative AI. Indeed we have contributed to this debate ourselves through past conference themes and presentations. This year we are not trying to deny the existence of LLMs and their ilk, but rather emphasising that learning and teaching is a human endeavour and focussing our attention on the role that individual students and teachers can play.
As such, the theme for this year's #durbbu is Little things that can make a big difference.
It is designed so you can interpret this in multiple ways. You could talk about the positive impact of small acts by staff or students, or a feature of a tool that really makes a difference to learning and teaching today. Or you could turn it on it's head and identify small changes that would make a process simpler or more effective. This is a user-led event, so feel free to call for change if it is needed!
One of the reasons behind the longevity of this conference is the range and strength of user presentations. As ever, the theme is only a prompt for ideas. If there is something else that you'd like to share with delegates that relates to learning and teaching with Blackboard and other tools (at the chalk-face or behind the scenes) then please submit a presentation or workshop proposal on that too!
