EC-TEL 2018 - The 13th European Conference on Technology-­Enhanced Learning

We live in an increasingly digital and globalized world that offers great opportunities for information sharing and the generation of new knowledge. This reality has enabled us to move forward rapidly as a society in many respects, but has also led us to complex, diverse and interdisciplinary challenges that affect all areas of knowledge such as health, demographic change and wellbeing; food security and bioeconomy; secure and clean energy; smart and green energy; or climate action and environment - to name just a few that are emphasized by the European Union.
In order to meet these major challenges, we need to build a society that enhances the development of 21st century skills in lifelong learning. 21st century skills encompass not only technical and domain-specific skills, but also domain-independent meta-skills such as the 4Cs: critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration; all needed to manage the complexity of future problems. On the other hand, dealing with the complexity and uncertainty of tomorrow's problems requires citizens capable of developing their knowledge throughout their lives. In this context, technology can play a key role in generating new learning environments that support learners across both formal and informal learning contexts, facilitating them in developing and practicing 21st century skills to face the challenges of the future.
This year, the European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL) aims at engaging researchers, practitioners, educational developers, entrepreneurs and policy makers in a joint discussion on how to put science, technology and practice at the service of learning to embrace these challenges on the topic: “Lifelong technology enhanced learning: Dealing with the complexity of 21st century challenges”. We are looking forward to contributions to feed the debate around this topic on many levels; to discuss and demonstrate how both lifelong learning and technology are indeed a solution to deal with future uncertainty and 21st century challenges. We also encourage participants to extend the debate around the role of and challenges for cutting edge 21st century technologies and advances such as artificial intelligence and robots, augmented reality and ubiquitous computing technologies for learning. We welcome papers reflecting on practices and different pedagogical approaches, types of learning settings, and application domains that can benefit from such technologies.
Theoretical and conceptual papers, as well as small-scale and large-scale empirical studies are welcome. Moreover, we encourage participants to conduct their scientific inquiry using emerging best practices from open science detailed in this call for papers.
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VENUE AND CO-LOCATION WITH MEI2018
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The venue for this year’s conference is Leeds, a vibrant, modern city and an important academic and economic centre. Leeds attracts visitors for its world class culture, heritage, arts, shopping, food & drink, as well as beautiful countryside and a lively nightlife. Highlights include the Yorkshire Dales, Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle, Royal Armouries Museum and the World Heritage Site of Saltaire. The University of Leeds will be hosting both EC-TEL 2018 (3rd-6th September) and Medical Education Informatics (6th-7th September) and we anticipate a lively exchange between the two co-located conferences, based on shared research and practice interests. To support this EC-TEL 2018 will include a TEL in Healthcare Education stream within the conference itself.
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CONFERENCE TOPICS
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From both research and innovative practice perspectives the following topics of interest to the conference include, but are not limited to:
Technological underpinning
Interactive systems
Mobile, wearable and pervasive technologies
Robots
Sensors and sensor networks
Roomware, ambient displays and ubiquitous devices
Visualization techniques for learning
Learning analytics
Artificial intelligence
Personalization, user modelling and adaptation
Context-aware systems
Recommender systems for TEL
Adapted learning flow, content and monitoring process
Augmented and virtual reality
Serious games, simulations and 3D virtual worlds
Social computing and social media
Semantic Web
Natural language processing and latent semantic analysis
Remote labs
Network infrastructures and architectures for TEL
Cloud Computing in TEL
Large-scale learning systems
eLearning specifications and standards
Interoperability and sharing of devices, tools and architectures
Pedagogical underpinning
Problem- and project-based learning / Inquiry based learning
Computer-supported collaborative learning
Collaborative knowledge building
Inquiry-based learning
Game-based and simulation-based learning
Story-telling and reflection-based learning
Learning design and design approaches
Technology-enhanced orchestration of learning
Communities of learners and communities of practice
Teaching techniques and strategies for online learning
Learner affect, motivation and engagement
Evaluation methods for TEL
Individual, social & organizational learning processes
Adaptive learning systems
Cognitive mechanisms in knowledge acquisition and construction
Self-regulated and self-directed learning
Reflective learning
Social processes in teams and communities
Learning group formation
Dynamic assessment of learning
Social awareness
Trust and reputation in TEL
Knowledge management and organizational learning
Learning communities and contexts
Schools and universities of the future
Formal education: initial (K-12, higher education), post-initial (continuing education)
Vocational training
Workplace learning
Lifelong learning
Digitalization as Driver for Lifelong Learning
Informal and non-formal learning
Ubiquitous learning
Seamless learning
Domain-specific Technology-Enhanced Learning
Global learning communities
Open Learning Arrangements
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)
Open educational resources (OER)
Learning Networks
Teacher Networks
Bring your own Device (BYOD)
Learning ecologies, learning ecosystems, fitness and evolvability of learning environments
Business models for TEL
TEL in developing countries and for users with special needs
ICT Inclusion for learning
Digital divide and learning
Generation divide and learning
Education policies
Promoting learning and employability within disadvantaged groups and communities
Rural learning
Accessible learning for all
Visual, hearing and physical impairments
Psycho-pedagogic support for users
Standards about accessibility and learning
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STATEMENT OF OPEN SCIENCE
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This year, and following the lead of other conferences of the community, we want to contribute to the Open Science movement to promote reproducible and verifiable research. With this aim, we encourage participants to conduct their scientific inquiry using Open Science best practices. Here you have some of the best practices you can think about:
Pre-registration. Results from experimental interventions are more robust when researchers predefine an experimental plan and register it. To do so, we encourage authors to have a look at different organizations such as the Open Science Framework, where you can report pre-registered and exploratory analyses to be reviewed by other researchers before running your intervention.
Share your data and analysis for replication. Sharing data sources (always anonymized!) as well as the scripts or programs you used to analyze them can help other researchers to replicate or extend your analysis. We encourage authors to share this information through personal web-pages or specialized Web-based platforms such as LearnSphere, Zenodo, Figshare.
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IMPORTANT DATES
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Full Papers, Short Papers, Posters & Demonstrations
• 15 April 2018 - Mandatory submission of an abstract
• 29 April 2018 - Submission of full version
• 27 May 2018 - Notification of acceptance
• 24 June 2018 - Camera-ready versions
Workshop Proposals
• 8 April 2018 - Submission of workshop proposal
• 6 May 2018 - Workshops notification
• 3rd and 4th September 2018 - Workshops, Leeds
Project Meetings
• 24 June 2018 - Room reservation for project meetings
• 3rd, 4th & 7th September 2018 - Project Meetings
Conference
• 24 July 2018 - Early-bird registration ends
• 3rd and 4th September 2018 - Workshops, Leeds
• 5th and 6th September 2018 - Main conference, Leeds
Doctoral Consortium
• 22 May 2018 - Doctoral Consortium application submission
• 19 June 2018 - Doctoral Consortium application notification
• 31 July 2018 - Doctoral Consortium reviews
• 28 August 2018 - Doctoral Consortium camera-ready versions
• 3rd September 2018 - Doctoral Consortium