Call for papers: Leicester, January 7-14, 2010
Call for Papers
Beyond Distance Research Alliance, University of Leicester
Learning Futures Festival Online 2010
“Positively Disruptive”
7th – 14th January 2010
Beyond Distance Research Alliance is a research and development centre with an international reputation based at the University of Leicester, headed by Professor Gilly Salmon. Beyond Distance will hold its 5th annual Learning Futures Festival Online 7th-14th January 2010. The festival title, “Positively Disruptive,” reflects the promise and challenge of innovative and future learning, moving from sharing good to outstanding practice and presenting risks and difficulties as well as new horizons.
The Festival will include synchronous and asynchronous e-tivities led by top practitioners in e-learning research – a great opportunity to us to work together to create, explore, and present for discussion a variety of plausible alternative futures for learning and teaching approaches in Higher Education.
The Festival will also feature a number of short-paper presentation sessions for which we invite submissions related to the following themes:
1. Economics: why waste a good crisis? Economic challenge can be an opportunity to create solutions and methods that are less expensive, cleverer, and better than before! The economic crisis may be just the opportunity e-learning has been waiting for to show that it has come of age.
2. Opening the e-doors to learner generated and open content: contributing or shrieking? The open education movement can be polarising, but whether you love it or hate it, it looks as if it’s here to say. Let’s have some healthy debate here.
3. Learning from the learners: do they know? Today’s learners can exercise greater choice over what to learn – and how to learn it — than earlier generations, and are more demanding customers. The role of learner experience in shaping the content and the delivery of the curriculum has been debated for decades. Do we have innovative answers for the 21st century?
4. Personalising the info-cloud: rain or sun? Today’s learners have amazing opportunities to personalise their learning and work informally with each other. But worries for HE include security risks and loss of privacy. How can we make the benefits outweigh the risks?
5. Silos in universities: can you make the connections? Is your quest too complex? Innovation in universities can be hindered by lack of communication between and even within departments. Success stories happen when individuals employ creative strategies to bridge the gaps. Tell us yours!
6. Learning from failure: if you had your time again…? Often the most valuable data is gathered when things don’t go according to plan. Time to share, time to expose, time to learn from each other…
7. Geo-everything: we know where you are – where are you going? GPS, mobile learning, Google Earth – what is the future for learning in this virtual global village we inhabit today? Tell us how you’re deploying it.
8. Second Life for the Second Decade: are we human or are we avatars? Second Life sometimes reflects First Life and sometimes contradicts it. Image and Build! Establishing an online identity is key to collaboration – can your avatar tell us how?
If you’d like to submit a practitioners paper and present during the conference please read carefully.
DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: 23rd October 2009
NOTIFICATION: 13th November 2009.
All selected presenters will be required to register for the conference at a special rate of GBP 25. Maximum 2 presenters per paper.
Criteria for selection
• Quality of submission
• Relevance to and balance of festival themes
• Value to the learning technology and academic practitioner community
• Demonstrated level of innovation and future orientation
Please submit your abstract (400 MAX words) outlining
1. Theme to which it relates
2. Title
3. Presenter(s), name(s) , institution(s), role(s)
4. E mails, telephone numbers.
5. 3 lines maximum summary
6. The context
7. Outcomes, advantages,
8. Challenges, and
9. Implications for the future of learning
Reviewers panel consisting of researchers and practitioners will select the final submissions. Abstracts should be submitted by visiting http://www.le.ac.uk/beyonddistance/festival/ and following the instructions to submit an abstract. Abstracts must be received by 23 October, 2009. Notification of selection will take place 13 November, 2009.
Final submissions of up to 1500 words must be received by the festival organisers by 11 December, 2009. Full papers will be posted online.
Presentations for the Learning Futures Festival Online will take place through a live online environment, which will enable participants to see the presenter via the presenter’s webcam, hear the presenter and see the presentation online. Presentation materials may take the form of PowerPoint or any other application. After the live presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session.
Selected presenters will be requested to enable their papers and presentation to be created as an Open Education Resource.
Keynote speakers will include:
Dr Stephen Bax – Reader, University of Bedfordshire; formerly Principal Lecturer in Language Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University where he directed CRADLE – the Centre for Research, Assessment and Development in Language Education, and directed the Department’s In-House MA programme in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). He has published widely in Teacher Education and in Computer Assisted Language Learning, is an elected Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and speaks Arabic, Spanish and French. He is also interested in Akkadian and other ancient and modern Semitic languages and has authored numerous websites, including language-learning sites for the BBC World Service.
Dr Chris Davies lectures at the Oxford University Department of Education, where he is course director for the MSc in eLearning and Research Associate of the Oxford Internet Institute. Among Chris’s current projects are the Becta-funded “Learners and their Context” project, looking into learners’ uses of technology in the home for learning, as part of the UK Government’s Harnesssing Technology Strategy. He organises the ESRC-funded seminar series The Educational and Social Impact of New Technologies on Young People in Britain, and is a member of a cross-disciplinary team working on the first stage of a project to develop a computer-based digital tool for supporting adult learners.
Contact Terese Bird (Beyond Distance Learning Technologist) with specific enquiries at t.bird@le.ac.uk
