The first general meeting of HERDSA members laid out a clear program of activities for the new Society that included an annual conference. The idea of forming a scholarly society had emerged from regular meetings at the ANZAAS Congress during the late 1960s and it was agreed that HERDSA should continue to align itself with the prestige of future Congresses. Since the inaugural HERDSA conference in 1975 the conference format has evolved several time. It began as a series of workshops with invited dinner speakers and slowly changed to include themes, paper presentations and printed conference proceedings. Originally, HERDSA conferences were hosted by universities and once universities no longer saw conference as core business the organisation of conferences was taken over by HERDSA Branches. The HERDSA Executive trialed several overseas locations, mainly in south-east Asia, and partnering with other organisations like ASET and ICED. Two highly influential trends was the establishment of government agencies focussing on higher education quality and development and a growing interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning which moved the focus of HERSDA conferences from presentations of higher education research to supporting HERDSA's new members joining the society for the first time.

1975- A compliment to the ANZAAS Congress

Kol Star was given the job of organising the first HERDSA conference, which was held in Burgmann College immediately following the ANZAAS Congress in Canberra in 1975. The conference fee included HERDSA membership, which became a feature of all later HERDSA conferences. Kol planned a program that would not compete with the ANZAAS Congress format of lengthy presentations on research projects. Instead, the HERDSA Conference would be organised around three workshops with groups discussing the significant challenges facing higher education. There would be an invited speaker at the dinner and Fred Katz would give a Presidential address before handing over the reins to a new President.

Around 100 people attended the first conference mostly to build relationships with people and understand problems they are likely to face in educational development. Everybody was a pioneer within the emerging field of higher education research and development, and only the University of Melbourne had much in the way of experience in establishing themselves as a successful centre. Roger Landbeck described the first conference format as delegates choosing teams and considering issues in higher education, such as curriculum development and assessment. Delegates remained with their team for the three days of the conference and the team produced a report for the final plenary session. Roger found active participation in workshops to be one of the most satisfying learning experiences he had been through up to that point.

Alan Lonsdale also recalled that he enjoyed the first conference because there was quite a bit of socialising as part of the program. That gave him the opportunity to meet others working in the same field and he came away from the conference thinking HERDSA was a good thing to be associated with, even if he couldn't recall any of the discussion in detail. Bob Cannon joined HERDSA specifically to attend the first conference at Burgmann College. Like Alan, Bob was feeling the isolation of working in educational development and was looking for a way to meet with colleagues in the field. The conference was held in the middle of summer and due to the heat, many of the sessions were moved outside under a tree in the college gardens. Unfortunately, the group discussions lacked structure and people did not really know what to talk about. But for Bob the conference was still a success because most of the attendees were experiencing a fair degree of hostility towards what they were doing in their institutions and it brought together people looking to build relationships and discussing what their units were doing.

1976- Needing better organisation of discussion groups

In general, the feedback from the first conference was positive with requests for better organisation of the discussion groups. The second HERDSA Conference was held at the newly constructed International House at the University of Melbourne. A flavour of conference life is shown in the the following short video (without audio) of how students lived at the recently completed Scheps Wing where delegates were housed in International House in 1976. 

Scheps Wing, c. 1972. International House Archives.

Jackie Lublin agreed to convene the second conference whose location was again scheduled to coincide with the ANZASS Congress. A few lessons had been learned from the previous Canberra conference. Firstly, most people who attended wanted to meet other staff members, exchange information, and share ideas. There was also a desire to hear from leaders in research and development and hear from experts in the field. Lastly, there was the desire to discuss topics related to research and development, but the discussion groups needed to be better organised. Alan Lonsdale volunteered to help with the organisation of the discussion groups and conducted a Delphi decision making exercise with the HERDSA Executive to identify discussion topics for the 1976 Conference

The three-day conference was again organised around discussion groups on topics such as 'Decision making at the Tertiary Level', 'Design and Evaluation of Courses' and 'New Approaches to Teaching and Learning'. There were no paper presentations and the 120 participants who attended mostly felt the format was preferable to the usual round of papers they would attend later at the ANZAAS Congress. Like the previous conference, the highlight for many was the social aspect of the Society, getting to know people, and getting glimmers of being part of something bigger than what was going on in their local institution.

1977- A conference theme and proceedings

The 1977 Sydney conference was the first HERDSA conference with a theme which John Powell nominated to be ‘Higher Education in a Steady State’. The conference program was expanded to include workshops, study groups and symposia, with two conference dinner speakers – Peter Karmel from the Australian Universities Commission and Ted Wheelwright, a Marxist economist from the University of Sydney. John also published a set of conference proceedings. It was Margot Pearson's first HERDSA conference and she found the discussions interesting. From then on she would always try to make a presentation of some sort, even after she left TERC to work for TAFE NSW.

John Jones came from University of Auckland to attend the HERDSA Conference. He was encouraged to join HERDSA by John Powell whom he knew from the University of Papua New Guinea. Like Margot, John Jones found the conference was a good experience. There was a sense that HERDSA was becoming an important forum to present papers, meet people, and to feel that you were part of something bigger. Rod McKay felt there was an energy at the conference which gave the Society the sense that it had some substance, providing him with a kit bag of ideas that allowed him to continue what he was doing at the University of Otago. Some delegates almost missed the conference when an air traffic controller strike closed all the airports around the country. Dave Boud and Mike Prosser turned up slightly disorientated after driving serval days from Perth to Sydney to attend the conference.

1978 Formal papers and launch of Research and Development in Higher Education

At the fourth annual conference a break was made with the ANZAAS Congress and the format moved from discussion workshops and seminars to the presentation of formal papers. Russell Linke describes how the move to paper presentations in allowed the first conference proceedings to be published in 1979. This was the beginning of a series of refereed conference papers published as Research and Development in Higher Education that was only discontinued after 42 volumes in 2020. At the conference John Powell replaced Bob Ross from Griffith University as the HERDSA President and he encouraged local groups to meet before the next annual conference in Brisbane. The Executive had decided to recognise contributions to HERDSA and the profession by awarding life memberships, and the first recipient was Kol Star who retired from the AVCC and HERDSA after the first conference due to ill health.

1982 Clairmont Inn in Kings Cross Sydney

Until 1982 most of the HERDSA conferences were held on a university campus with accommodation provided by the colleges. They ran with very meagre resources, relying on the conference convener to draw on the patronage of the academic unit within their university to do the organisational work needed to hold a conference. Jackie Lublin had only recently moved to the newly established Centre for Teaching and Learning at the University of Sydney. Without institutional support Jackie chose to host the 8^th conference at the Clairmont Inn in Kings Cross in Sydney. The HERDSA conference was developing a reputation as a friendly event. Sydney was Peggy Nightingale's first HERDSA conference which she only attended because it was a local conference in higher education and Macquarie university would pay the registration fees. She recalls not knowing anybody when she walked into the conference venue and coming out with a bunch of friends.

1983 Plus an Educational Developers Day

The 1983 annual conference was originally planned for New Zealand but arrangements fell through at the last minute and Ingrid Moses stepped in to convene the conference in Brisbane. Ingrid put her impressive organisational skills to work ensuring there were quality papers and there was a lot of social interaction alongside the academic sessions. For Ingrid, one the attractions of HERDSA conferences was that accommodation was in university colleges. This provided opportunities for mixing with people away from the conference and a chance for conference delegates to make new friends.

Ever since the first HERDSA conference, conference conveners had prided themselves on ensuring a memorable conference dinner. In Brisbane, Ingrid had arranged for Malcolm Bradbury, a novelist who satirised academic life, to be the after-dinner speaker. HERDSA dinners were also developing a reputation for their party atmosphere, with rumours of the HERDSA conference being a place where people were looking for temporary partners. All of which might explain why so many fondly remembering the friendly conference atmosphere.

The Brisbane conference was followed by a special Educational Developers Day attended by most of the educational development unit directors and their staff. People who worked in educational development units had always formed an active group of HERDSA members and the unit directors were all supporters of HERDSA. For many, like Mike Prosser , the conference was a place to share your research while attending the Educational Developers Day was a means of having educational developers concerns dealt with effectively without putting too great an influence on the conference.

1984 New Zealand pulls out of hosting the conference a second time

In 1984 there were still hopes of holding the conference at the University of Otago, which was one of the bigger academic development units on the South Island of New Zealand with enough staff to manage the conference in-house. Rod McKay was helping to organise the conference and says his university simply refused to support holding the conference in Wellington. Once again, late and unforeseen changes in arrangements meant that the 10^th annual conference was relocated, this time to the Clairmont Inn in Kings Cross Sydney. Like Ingrid Moses before her, Jackie Lublin stepped in at the last minute as the Conference Convener, drawing on her experience of convening the successful 1982 conference.

1985 Third time lucky for New Zealand

A third attempt at holding a conference in New Zealand was again tried in 1985 and also looked destined for failure. The location was planned for Dunedin however at the last minute University of Otago withdrew their offer to host the conference. John Jones says the reason for the cancellation was never explained to him. All he received was a phone call from Ernest Roe who asked if he could run the conference at Auckland. John agreed on the condition he could arrange support from the Department of Continuing Education to handle the administration. John describes the conference as a success, with reasonably good attendance of 80 to 100 people, of which quite a few came across from Australia. Comments on a lack of consideration of women's issues were made throughout the conference to such an extent that a workshop was organised to formalise the discussions. Several strategies for change were suggested, not the least of which was that HERDSA needed to devote more time to these discussions at the next conference.

1987 First conference in South East Asia

In 1987 the 13^th conference conveners thought a move into South East Asia would be a useful innovation and an affiliated conference in Singapore was organised to follow the HERDSA conference in Perth. Alan Lonsdale reported that 35 delegates travelled to Singapore as an extension of the HERDSA Conference. Dai Hounsell, Director of the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Assessment at the University of Edinburgh, gave the keynote at both conferences. For HERDSA delegates the Singapore sessions provided a valuable opportunity to establish and extend both professional and personal links in a wide range of areas.

1988 Personally Arranged Learning Sessions (PeArLS)

The 14^th conference held in Melbourne in 1988 returned to a more interactive format, with participants spending time in their choice of study group, meeting throughout the conference to consider a substantive issue facing higher education. In addition, there were Personally Arranged Learning Sessions (PeArLS) for presenters to share their preliminary research questions and get peer discussion going about potential study. Alison Viskovic joined HERDSA when she attended the HERDSA Conference. She remembers there were several New Zealanders who were leading lights in helping get things going in New Zealand. Alison stayed at Ormond College where there were opportunities to meet New Zealanders she had not met before. Alison says that the conference lived up to HERDSA's reputation of having a fun social program.

1989 Suspicions raised about the directors of units meetings

After a ten year break it was Bob Cannon's turn to volunteer to host the 15^th HERDSA Conference in Adelaide in 1989. HERDSA conferences were settling on a format of guest speakers, member's papers, discussion groups and PeArL sessions. Just under 200 delegates attended with Bob finding that generally the discussion and papers were of good quality. He was fortunate to have his colleague Gerry Mullins look after the academic side of the conference proceedings, while Bob organised the administration. What struck Bob was the lack of resources he had to operate under compared to later conferences. There were not the funds to employ professional administration. The conference was entirely on university property in some pretty poor seminar rooms, as they were in most places in those days, and people stayed in university colleges.

Bob Cannon also convened the director's meeting which usually occurred at the beginning or end of the HERDSA conference. The directors had decided from the beginnings of HERDSA that they would like to talk to each other about issues distinct from those being discussed by the general membership. Bob says this created a lot of suspicion and resentment among the ordinary membership, who wondered what the directors were talking about. It was a useful forum for directors to talk about running their units, management, financial issues, staff management, but it created an underlying tension until a separate organisation was created.

1991 Growing membership from Polytechnics in New Zealand

In 1991 Alison Visovic was encouraged to convene the second HERDSA conference to be held in New Zealand after she was part of a team that organised a successful local conference at the Central Institute of Technology. With 240 delegates, the Wellington conference was twice the size of the first conference in Auckland, demonstrating how substantially the New Zealand membership had grown since then. This was largely due to an increase in membership of practitioners from polytechnical colleges. In recognition of this new membership, the format of the conference hosted by the Business School at Victoria University of Wellington introduced a workshop strand to run in parallel with the research paper strand. The workshop program suited Angela Brew who attended her first HERDSA conference in Wellington. Angela was still at the Portsmouth Polytechnic and the workshops she was giving in the region were the way she was able to fund a trip to New Zealand.

In 1991 Barbara Grant was working as a Research Assistant on a project in the Higher Education Research Office at the University of Auckland and John Jones suggested they write a paper together for the conference. Although it was challenging, Barbara remembers it was exciting to attend the conference as a student, having her registration and accommodation paid by the university. John and Barbara wrote the paper as a dialogue which they performed with members of the audience. Barbara says she found HERDSA fun, friendly, and lively, with lots of debates that she liked.

1993 HERDSA'S 21st birthday celebration

The 19^th HERDSA Conference hosted at the University of New South Wales was promoted as HERDSA's 21st birthday event. Ernest Roe and Allan Prosser presented an overview of the early days of HERDSA. The conference almost did not take place due to last minute changes in the organising committee that required Ian Dunn to step in and co-ordinate the organisation. After the concern expressed at the conference the previous year about the lack of representation of women and their views, Ian ensured that there was a better balance in the number of women involved and the issues being discussed. The program included home groups to discuss issues raised by the keynote speakers. The theme of women in leadership was carried over as part of the Educational Developers Day.

1994 Introducing professional conference assistance

Margot Pearson recalls being asked to convene the 20th conference in Canberra. Although everyone in the Centre for Educational Development Academic Methods (CEDAM) was involved in the conference organisation, Margot used professional conference assistance from Conference Logistics. The conference had a good turnout, with many academics at the Australian National University – including the Vice Chancellor – getting involved, which Margot says raised the profile of CEDAM in the university. Linda Worrall-Carter described the conference as extremely well organised, with a range of presentations suited to people from many different situations. Many of the delegates enjoyed the two free evenings and the formal dinner in the New Parliament House.

1996  PERTH

The 22^nd annual conference was held in Perth and convened by Sarah Mann. Maureen Bell was encouraged to go to her first HERDSA Conference in Perth by Robert Kennelly whom she knew through the NGODS network. Maureen thought the conference was full of luminaries whose names she recognised from her MEd research. Maureen described the atmosphere as stimulating because of all the ideas floating around that demonstrated that high level research was taking place. Even though she was only starting her research career Maureen says after the first conference she never felt like an outsider. There would be people who she felt were very supportive of her and her role, and were very welcoming of her into the HERDSA fold. 

1998  Auckland

Kathryn Sutherland went to her first HERDSA Conference in Auckland in 1998 where she presented a poster on her PhD research. Even though she was at the early stages of her research Kathryn's supervisor had recommend that she present at a local conference. A memory that has stuck with Kathryn from that first conference is that one of the keynote speakers came into a presentation as a participant where there was no room left at the tables. This person chose to sit on the floor, refusing to take somebody else's seat. Kathryn was impressed by that person's humility and their willingness to be a member of the community which, as a PhD student, struck her as the kind of community she wanted to be part of.

2000 Joint conference with Australian Society for Educational Technology (ASET)

One criticism of HERDSA from the early days was its lack of interest in educational technology. The 26^th conference in Toowoomba was a joint conference with Australian Society for Educational Technology, a sister organisation which included many HERDSA members. Delegates had mixed reviews about the large number of presentations and lack of opportunities for discussion. The conference food and conference dinner were rated as outstanding but many delegates complained that they had outgrown staying in student accommodation. The conference guidelines were updated to reflect that conference papers needed to be a certain standard for Government recognition as a research output.

2002 HERDSA linking with ICED

Owen Hicks had volunteered his Centre at UWA to convene the conference. As the HERDSA representative on ICED Owen had lobbied to hold the ICED conference in Perth following the 2002 HERDSA Conference. One of Owen's staff members, Allan Goody, joined the HERDSA Executive to help with Conference planning. Allan explains that it can feel very isolated in Western Australia and HERDSA was the organisation that most academic developers joined, and with a conference in WA several joined the Executive.

The 28th Conference in Perth was Shelda Debowski's first HERDSA conference. Even though she only came as a day delegate it was so friendly and welcoming that she regretted not staying for the whole conference. Kathryn Sutherland agrees that the 2002 Conference was particularly memorable because of the combination of HERDSA followed by the ICED conference. She also recalls meeting Roger Landbeck who took her under his wing as a new HERDSA member, walking arm in arm with her between campuses and accommodation. The friendly atmosphere of the conference was part of the reason Kathryn joined the HERDSA Executive the following year.

2003 University of Canterbury... at last

Rod McKay was determined that the University of Canterbury would convene a HERDSA conference before he retired. After the blockages that he had experienced to the 1985 conference that led it to being moved to Auckland, Rod judged that he had a much more amenable Vice Chancellor at University of Canterbury who was interested in teaching issues. Also the New Zealand Branch was now a viable community and the conference working group had members from Christchurch, Otago, and Dunedin. They decided that each university should have a turn at hosting a conference because of the value it provided for their local classroom teachers. The Christchurch conference is often fondly remembered because it was located a short drive from the Mt Hutt ski fields which made it an attractive destination during the New Zealand winter.

The most difficult part of any HERDSA conference was the paper selection and Rod McKay agrees that it was the same in Christchurch. He describes this as the tension between the research and development aims of HERDSA, which was trying to publish leading edge research, while encouraging discipline-based researchers to attend as well. Rod wanted to encourage classroom teachers because they were the people he worked with at Otago. He saw that there are lots of benefits when someone writes their first conference paper and needs to engage with the literature. Rod, and his co-convener Helen Matthews, wanted delegates to have opportunities to break away from their traditional peer groups and meet and learn with other people. Pre-conference workshops were introduced as another way of raising revenue for HERDSA.

2004 Miri Malaysia

The 30th HERDSA conference held in Miri Malaysia and hosted by Curtin University was the first held outside Australia and New Zealand since the Singapore Conference in 1987. The decision to hold a conference overseas was considered to be a risk, but HERDSA's finances had recovered enough to show a small surplus. The conference was relatively small and proved not to be financially rewarding.

2006 New members breakfast

The nature of HERDSA conferences was shifting from established higher education researchers to a focus on supporting new members. The New Members Breakfast was introduced in Perth and became a feature of future conferences. At the same time conference dinners were being seen as optional by delegates. The dinner was always inclusive of the conference registration fee and scheduled for the final evening of the conference while the final day of presentations finished at lunchtime. Increasingly the conference dinner had a significant number of empty seats as delegates left before the final day. Shelda Debowski says that at Perth it became clear that at future conferences the dinner would need to become a subsidised but optional part of the conference registration fee.

2010  Most creative paper presentation

At the Melbourne Conference HERDSA introduced a prize for the most creative presentation. Having sat through some dull keynote presentations Kathryn Sutherland vowed that she would always engage in creating learning opportunities no matter the context. Kathryn felt that in a Society that professes to be teaching people how to teach, and how to create engaging learning environments, the last thing presenters should be doing is reading from their scholarly papers to a crowd of 300 people. Kathryn presented a theatrical role play scenario with her colleague Linda Bowen and won the inaugural creative presentation award.

2014  Professional Buddies in Hong Kong

The benefit of hosting a conference is the ability to shape it in a Branch's own image. The 40^th conference in Hong Kong was the first conference hosted by the Hong Kong Branch. It introduced the idea of HERDSA Buddies to help new members feel welcome at the conference, something that would become a feature of future conferences. Many conveners mentioned the most challenging part of hosting a conference is organising the proceedings. Allan Goody worked with the Hong Kong Branch to ensure they were able to achieve the expected standard of the conference publication Research and Development in Higher Education.

How a Branch runs a conference in 2015

Liz Levin describes the 41st conference as very much a Branch conference with people from the Branch working at different universities volunteering to organise it. Liz wanted people to come to the conference and to have a good time, to make connections with one another, and to listen to interesting keynote speakers who made them think. Liz says it was important to provide a lot of diversity because there was a huge range of people connected to HERDSA and she wanted to make sure that there was something for everybody.

By 2015 the days of hosting a HERDSA conference at a university with delegates staying in student accommodation were no longer part of the Conference Organising Committee's thinking. When Liz Levin approached different universities for the Melbourne conference it was virtually impossible for her to find one prepared to take HERDSA on board, and those that did were going to cost the same as a convention centre. Liz found there are very few venues that can hold the number of people that HERDSA now has coming to a conference and accommodate the required number of concurrent sessions. These venues are run by professional conference organising companies and cost the same as hosting a conference in a university while providing a higher level of support for the conference convener. Liz found it was better to have a team in a professional venue that knows what they're doing.

Liz approached Beverly Oliver to be the Conference Chair. As convener Liz would do all work behind the scenes with Beverly being the face of the conference. Beverly agreed and invited her people from Deakin to help with the organisation of the conference.

The conference proceedings on the other hand turned out to be a painful process because the conference organisers were used to working with abstracts and had no system in place to work with full papers. Liz had help from Kym Fraser and Theta Thomas who did most of the editing. Although Liz says the team managed to get the conference proceedings done, having to recreate the process from scratch every year with a different set of conference organisers was not sustainable.

Deb Clarke agreed to organise Professional Buddies program for the Melbourne HERDSA conference. The Professional Buddies turned out to be a highly successful initiative because of the range of cultures that come to a HERDSA conference, including a considerable number of people moving from discipline-based research to learning and teaching research. These participants all said that HERDSA is very different to their usual conferences in terms of language, tone, culture, and the sense of networking and connectedness.

2020-2021 The CoVID years

The first case of the coronavirus in Australia was reported in Victoria on January 2020 followed by the first COVID-19 death reported in March 2020. Throughout March state governments, along with the Federal government, began to respond to the growing pandemic by restricting people's movement and closing borders, schools and businesses. By July it was clear that the HERDSA Conference scheduled for Brisbane could not proceed and it was postponed until 2021.

The discontinuation in 2020 of Research and Development in Higher Education which published the refereed conference papers opened a space for a new HERDSA journal. To be distinctive to HERD, the new journal was launched to focus on emerging research and researchers. Advancing Scholarship and Research in Higher Education was no longer to have any connection with the conference. Instead, the journal would publish research studies that reported on scholarly approaches to higher education curriculum, student learning and teaching.