About Learning and Teaching Week 2026

Learning and Teaching Week 2026 at Nelson Mandela University is a flagship institutional event dedicated to advancing excellence, innovation, and transformation in higher education. Taking place from 04–06 August 2026, the week brings together academic staff, professional staff, and students to engage in critical, reflective, and scholarly conversations about teaching, learning, and assessment.

This year’s theme, “Innovation with Impact: Humanising Teaching for Transformative Higher Education,” foregrounds the importance of purposeful, evidence-informed pedagogical innovation that enhances student success while recognising the wellbeing, agency, and development of both students and staff.

The programme creates a dynamic platform for dialogue, knowledge-sharing, and collaboration, where participants explore how teaching can be both intellectually rigorous and socially responsive. Central to these engagements is a commitment to humanising education, positioning learning and teaching as relational, inclusive, and grounded in care, dignity, and context.

Learning and Teaching Week 2026 also responds to ongoing calls for curriculum transformation and decolonisation, encouraging critical engagement with what is taught, how it is taught, and whose knowledge is valued. Through this lens, the week highlights teaching as a scholarly and ethical practice that supports epistemological access, student agency, and meaningful participation in knowledge-making.

Participants will engage with contemporary approaches to:

• innovative and digitally enhanced pedagogies
• assessment for and as learning
• student engagement and success
• equity, access, and inclusion
• the scholarship of teaching and learning

Ultimately, Learning and Teaching Week 2026 aims to foster a shared institutional culture where innovation, scholarship, and transformation intersect to create impactful and sustainable educational practices.