EC-TEL 2012: Seventh European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning
21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills

http://www.ec-tel.eu

18-21 September 2012, Saarbrücken, Germany

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.

IMPORTANT DATES

Paper, short paper, poster, & demonstration submission: 02 April 2012
Paper, short paper, poster, & demonstration notification: 04 June 2012
Camera-ready versions:
02 July 2012
Room reservation for project meetings deadline: 15 June 2012
Workshop proposals: 02 April 2012
Workshop notification: 30 April 2012
Workshops: 18-19 September 2011
Conference: 20-21 September 2011


CONFERENCE ORGANISATION

General Chair: Carlos Delgado Kloos, eMadrid/TELSpain/Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Programme Chairs: Stefanie Lindstaedt, Graz University of Technology and Know-Center, Austria; Andrew Ravenscroft, CASS School of Education and Communities, University of East London, UK
Industry Chair: Volker Zimmermann, imc, Germany
Workshop Chair: Tobias Ley, Talinn University, Estonia
Poster and Demonstration Chair: Davinia Hernández-Leo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Doctoral Consortium Chairs: Katherine Maillet, Télécom SudParis, France; Mario Allegra, Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche, Italy
Dissemination Chair: Sergey Sosnovsky, CeLTech (DFKI / Saarland University), Germany
Local Organization Chair: Christoph Igel, CeLTech (DFKI / Saarland University), Germany


CONFERENCE TOPICS

From both research and innovative practice perspectives the following topics of interest to the conference include, but are not limited to:


Technological underpinning

Large scale sharing and interoperability
Personalization, user modelling and adaptation
Context-aware systems
Social computing
Social media
Semantic Web
Mobile technologies
Serious games and 3D virtual worlds
Network infrastructures and architectures for TEL
Sensors and sensor networks
Augmented reality
Roomware and ubiquitous learning
Data mining and information retrieval
Recommender systems for TEL
Natural language processing and latent semantic analysis
eLearning specifications and standards
Learning analytics
Pedagogical underpinning

Problem- and project-based learning / Inquiry based learning
Computer supported collaborative learning
Collaborative knowledge building
Game-based and simulation-based learning
Story-telling and reflection-based learning
Instructional design and design approaches
Communities of learners and communities of practice
Teaching techniques and strategies for online learning
Learner motivation and engagement
Evaluation methods for TEL
Individual, social & organizational learning processes

Cognitive mechanisms in knowledge acquisition and construction
Self-regulated and self-directed learning
Reflective learning
Social processes in teams and communities
Social awareness
Knowledge management and organizational learning
Sustainability and TEL business models and cases
Business-learning models
Trust and reputation in TEL
Fitness and evolvability of learning environments
Learning contexts and domains

Schools of the future
Promoting learning and employability within disadvantaged groups and communities
Applications of TEL in various domains
Formal education: initial (K-12, higher education), post-initial (continuing education)
Workplace learning in small, medium and large companies
Aggregated learning at the workplace Distance and online learning
Lifelong learning (cradle to grave)
Vocational training
Informal learning
Non-formal learning
Ubiquitous learning
Knowledge management

TEL in developing countries

ICT Inclusion for learning
Digital divide and learning
Generation divide and learning
Education policies
Rural learning
TEL, functional diversity and users with special needs

Accessible learning for all
Visual, hearing and physical impairments
Psycho-pedagogic support for users
Educational guidance for tutors
Adapted learning flow, content and monitoring process
Standards about accessibility and learning




SUBMISSION FORMATS

Submissions will be handled through EasyChair (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ectel2012). All papers will be reviewed through a non-blind review process. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Proceedings will be published by Springer within their “Lecture Notes in Computer Science” series which is ranked in the ISI Web of Knowledge. The use of supplied template is mandatory:http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-7-72376-0

Full Papers: max. 14 pages, published in proceedings
Short Papers and Demonstrations: max. 6 pages, published in proceeding
Posters: max. 4 pages, 1 page summary published in proceedings
Workshop proposals: max. 4 pages, not published in proceedings



DEMONSTRATIONS

The EC-TEL Demonstration and interaction session is your chance to fully engage EC-TEL attendees at a personal level by letting them see, touch, squeeze, or hear your visions for the future of TEL, or demonstrate highly interactive ‘TEL in Action’ (e.g. through videos or real-time learning experiences). We expect that your Demonstration will be a reliably running prototype of your vision that is ready to be tried out, questioned and interacted with.

You need to submit a concise description of your prototype, clearly showing how your technological innovation realises a clear learning innovation. This needs to be in a paper that is a maximum of 6 pages that will be published in the EC-TEL 2012 proceedings if accepted.

At the conference, all accepted demonstrations will be invited to participate in the EC-TEL 2012 Prototype-SLAM session. The participants of the EC-TEL SLAM session will vote for the best EC-TEL prototype in this session and the winner will be awarded.

In particular, we encourage Demonstration submissions that complement an EC-TEL Paper submission, so that attendees can get a direct experience of your work in addition to the scientific presentation.



POSTERS

Posters report on significant work in progress. We are planning an interactive poster and demonstration session in which you can present your work and elicit feedback from EC-TEL participants. Please submit a paper up to a maximum of 4 pages describing your work and the results that you plan to achieve until September 2012. A 1-page summary of this will then be published within the EC-TEL proceedings.



WORKSHOPS

EC-TEL 2012 offers the opportunity to host several workshops. Parties interested to organize a workshop are asked to submit a proposal of max. 4 pages outlining the theme of the workshop, workshop format, expected participants and domains addressed, dissemination activities, programme committee, and organizational requirements. Proposals should be submitted via the EasyChair system of EC-TEL.

The workshop selection will be handled competitively: proposals will be ranked according to innovativeness, interaction intensity, overall quality, and comprehensive planning and the top 7-8 proposals will be chosen. Organizers are encouraged to propose innovative and interactive formats, and these will be given priority in the selection process. Examples of ‘TEL in Action’ or ‘Near-future TEL’ through collections and orchestrations of live technology-rich interactions, or through innovative uses of interactive media, are particularly welcome.

Elicitation of contributions and participants for the workshops, as well as publication of the results will be handled by the workshop organizers themselves. Organizers are encouraged to target high quality publication outlets (e.g. Special Issues in Journals) with the initial or reworked workshop contributions.

In each accepted workshop, a flipchart or other form of documentation showing the most important results of the workshop will have to be prepared. Workshop organizers will give a short 10-minute presentation at the EC-TEL 2012 Interactivity Session about the results and follow-up activities of their workshop.


PROJECT MEETINGS

In addition to the regular sessions and workshops, EC-TEL offers a unique opportunity for European Projects in TEL to held face-to-face meetings. Please contact the local organization chair at your earliest convenience to book meeting rooms.



DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM

The EC-TEL Doctoral Consortium brings together Ph.D. students working on topics related to Technology Enhanced Learning. The doctoral consortium will offer Ph.D. students the opportunity to present, discuss, and receive feedback on their research in an interdisciplinary and international atmosphere. Prominent professors and researchers in the field of Technology Enhanced Learning will provide feedback to the selected papers and participate actively and contribute to the discussions. The Doctoral Consortium will take place immediately before the EC-TEL 2012 conference.

The intention of this doctoral consortium is to support and inspire Ph.D. students during their ongoing research efforts. Therefore, it is necessary that authors will have neither achieved their Ph.D. degree nor officially submitted their thesis before the doctoral consortium (September 2012). To enforce this rule we require authors to disclose their expected graduation date and their advisor's name when submitting.

DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM ELIGIBILITY AND APPLICATION PROCESS:

In contrast to regular conference papers, submissions should address specifically doctoral work!

Therefore, the following elements have to be addressed in the papers:

A clear formulation of the research question,
An identification of the significant problems in the field of research,
An outline of the current knowledge of the problem domain, as well as the state of existing solutions,
A presentation of any preliminary ideas, the proposed approach and the results achieved so far,
A sketch of the applied research methodology,
A description of the Ph.D. project's contribution to the problem solution,
A discussion of how the suggested solution is different, new, or better as compared to existing approaches to the problem.
Accepted students should prepare:

An introduction of themselves and their PhD project for the introductory session. Duration: 60 sec max.
A 15-20 minute presentation of their PhD project to be used for introducing discussion about their project and its main issues during the small group sessions.
Students are also invited to prepare a poster about their Ph.D. for the EC-TEL 2012 poster session.
All papers will be reviewed after acceptance by at least two senior researchers and one of the accepted doctoral candidates. Additionally, two discussants, members of the doctoral consortium committee, will be appointed to each paper. Discussant comments will be followed by a plenary discussion of the paper. At the end of the consortium there will be a general discussion, including a brainstorming session about current and future research topics in the area.


DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM CALENDAR

Doctoral Consortium application submission: May 31, 2012
Doctoral Consortium application notification: June 29, 2012
Doctoral Consortium reviews: July 31, 2012
Doctoral Consortium camera-ready versions: September 7, 2012
Doctoral Consortium: September 19, 2012