As part of our commitment to the developmental nature of the Conference, we provide guidelines to help newer researchers develop skills important to submitting and presenting. As a peer reviewed conference, the quality of submissions is an essential selection criteria. Strong abstracts demonstrate some or all of the following elements: clarity of aims or focus, engagement with relevant literature, clear connection to the broad conference topic and the higher education setting in general, sufficient detail to enable reviewers to get a sense of what will be presented. Each abstract (400 words) should contain the following as appropriate to your work:

1. Title of presentation (brief but indicative of contents).
2. Purpose of presentation: Clearly state what your specific presentation will seek to do before setting out the relevant debates and information on your research.
3. Clear statement on the nature of the research being presented (e.g. conceptual work, literature review discussion, reflexive analysis, empirical research) and the stage you will have been reached by the time of presentation (e.g. literature review completed, developing methodology, initial pilot study, developing theoretical framework for testing, ongoing research, reporting on completed research).
4. Methodology, approach and sample.
5. Key argument, findings, implications and/or conclusions to be presented.
6. Short list of references (it is important to locate your presentation in relation to the research literature and to refer to this).
7. Please note above guidelines on submission of symposia.

• Write in a clear, concise and accessible way, keeping focused on what’s going to happen in this specific presentation rather than your work in general. ‘Get to the point’ quickly in the opening section, making it clear what you are going to present and why. Reviewers and delegates only have 400 words to get familiar with your work and your aims in this presentation, so spending a long time at the beginning mapping out the background to your general theoretical framework, or providing a long piece on the wider literature may not be as useful as clearly stating what your presentation will seek to do.

• Try to avoid jargon, synonyms that are not explained, overly dense language or a focus on very specific terms or concepts that may not be familiar to a wider audience. The audience will include a range of people researching HE from many different perspectives.

• Make good use of a small number of headings to structure your submission.

• Ensure that you cover all of the areas required in an abstract that are relevant to your submission, perhaps noting where some are not applicable just to help the reviewer understand what your research is and is not (e.g. if you work is primarily conceptual at this stage, that’s fine, just make it clear that is the case).

• Make reference to at least 3-4 key pieces of literature related to your field of research/enquiry. References are included in the word count, so a good balance is needed between using citations and not using up your word count.

• Make good use of the word count – if you are well below or above the 400 word abstract, then you are probably not making effective use of the space.

• Don’t forget that your abstract is not only submitted for reviewers to judge your submission, but will appear in the list of abstracts from which delegates will decide whether or not to attend your presentation. To help ensure you are attracting your target audience, make sure that your abstract is of a good quality and clearly states what you want to do and why.

• Ask a friend, colleague or supervisor to read and comment on your abstract.

All abstract proposals should be submitted electronically, using the link below. Authors will find here all the instructions needed on what is required in making a submission.