EC-TEL 2012 - 2012 : Seventh European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning

The European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL) is a unique opportunity for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to address current challenges and advances in the field. Through EC-TEL, established and emerging researchers as well as practitioners, entrepreneurs, and technology developers explore new collaborations, strengthen networks, and compliment their core experience.
Promoting and developing 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills that meet contemporary needs and challenges is a key priority within the European Union and constituent countries. Crucial questions need to be addressed, such as:
How can schools prepare young people for the technology-rich workplace of the future?
How can we use technology to promote informal and independent learning outside traditional educational settings?
How can we use next generation social and mobile technologies to promote informal and responsive learning?
Answers to these questions suggest encompassing a large variety of new and skills, and TEL research addressing these will need to draw on core disciplines of Computer Science, Education, Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Social Science. These may begin with the ability to work fluently with modern and emerging ICT-tools, which can be regarded as the essential skill in the 21st century. This extends to meta-cognitive and reflective skills such as self-management, self-motivation, and effective informal and self-regulated learning. And finally, it also encompasses skills to create and manage knowledge within organizational settings and communities. Underpinning these challenges is the universal desire for people to learn useful skills relevant to their current roles and future prospects. In this sense it dramatically changes the perspective from training to learning and shifts the responsibility for skill development from the organization to the individual. Similarly, as significant economic constraints limit the investment in education and learning technologies, learning support needs to achieve higher impact at a lower cost.
This focus on skills, practice and impact is reflected in EC-TEL itself. EC-TEL 2012 is, for the first time, specifically appealing to Technology Enhanced Learning innovators, creative practitioners and other representatives from e-learning more generally. Extended demonstrations and interactive ‘TEL in action’ sessions will spark discussions between different but complimentary groups, and be animated and disseminated through live internet radio broadcasts. EC-TEL 2012 will examine and improve the transitions between research, practice and industry.
We invite contributions for demonstrations, workshops and project meetings as well as academic research papers. A doctoral consortium will also be organized concurrently with the workshops.