Technology enhanced learning
Call for Contributions: EC-TEL 2013 -- 8th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning
About EC-TEL
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 complement their core experience. This year's theme is "Scaling Up Learning for Sustained Impact". We invite contributions for original research papers, demonstrations and workshops. A doctoral consortium will also be organized concurrently with the workshops. EC-TEL 2013 also offers the opportunity to host project meetings.
Important Dates
- Abstract submission (papers, posters, demos): 25 March 2013
- Full submission (papers, posters, demos): 2 April 2013
- Notification of acceptance: 4 June 2013
- Camera ready versions: 28 June 2013
- Room reservation for project meetings: 15 June 2013
- Workshop proposals: 2 April 2013
- Workshop notifications: 30 April 2013
- Workshops: 17, 18, 21 September 2013
- Project meetings: 16-18 & 21 September 2013
- Main conference: 18-20 September 2013
Topic Areas
EC-TEL invites contributions in the following (non-exclusive) areas. For a more detailed topic listing, see the call for papers on the EC-TEL 2013 website.
- Technological underpinning
- Pedagogical underpinning
- Individual, social & organisatonal processes
- Sustainability and scaling of TEL solutions
- Learning contexts and domains
- TEL in developing countries
- TEL, functional diversity and users with special needs
Submissions
- Full Papers: max. 14 pages, published in proceedings
- Short Papers: max. 6 pages, published in proceeding
- Demonstration Papers: max. 4 pages, published in proceedings; At the conference, all accepted demonstrations will be invited to participate in the EC-TEL 2013 Demo Sprint contest, a plenary session where all demos are presented. The audience of the EC-TEL Demo Sprint session will vote for the best EC-TEL demo, and the winner will be awarded.
- Poster Papers: max. 4 pages, 2 page summary published in proceedings
- Workshop proposals: max. 4 pages, not published in proceedings. Note: We are exploring possibilities for arranging publication of all workshop papers in a post-conference proceedings volume to be published by Springer. Workshop organizers are requested to indicate in their proposals whether they would like to contribute to such a post-conference proceedings volume, or whether they are targeting other high-quality publication outlets (international impact-rated journals, including special issues in these).
Doctoral Consortium
EC-TEL 2013: Eighth 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 complement their core experience. This year's theme is "Scaling Up Learning for Sustained Impact". We invite contributions for demonstrations, workshops and project meetings, as well as original research papers. A doctoral consortium will also be organized concurrently with the workshops. Please find all details at the EC-TEL 2013 website.
Perfecţionarea personalului didactic în domeniul învăţării bazate pe noile tehnologii, în instituţiile de învăţământ superior din Regatul Unit
Acest articol prezintă un studiu despre perfecţionarea personalului didactic din instituţiile britanice de învăţământ superior, în domeniul învăţării bazate pe noile tehnologii, care a avut loc în noiembrie 2011. Datele pentru acest studiu au fost adunate prin intermediul unui sondaj on-line trimis pe adresa de e-mail a coordonatorilor Forumului e-Learning, fiecare instituţie britanică fiind reprezentată în cadrul acestei reţele – al cărei obiectiv este ameliorarea învăţării şi a predării prin folosirea noilor tehnologii – de către un membru cu experienţă al personalului său didactic.
Înaintea realizării sondajului, s-au făcut căutări documentare pe site-urile web cu acces gratuit ale câtorva universităţi, care au permis colectarea de informaţii similare referitoare la perfecţionarea personalului didactic în domeniul învăţării bazate pe noile tehnologii. La sondajul on-line s-au primit 27 de răspunsuri, aproape un sfert din numărul total (adică 118) al instituţiilor de învăţământ superior din Regatul Unit înscrise pe lista coordonatorilor Forumului e-Learning. În acest sondaj, au fost reprezentate atât instituţiile înscrise înainte de 1992 (16 universităţi), cât şi cele înscrise după 1992 (11 universităţi), iar rezultatele arată modul în care acest eşantion de instituţii britanice de învăţământ superior realizează perfecţionarea personalului didactic în domeniul învăţării bazate pe noile tehnologii. Principala întrebare a sondajului din cadrul acestei cercetări a fost: „Ce măsuri iau instituţiile britanice de învăţământ superior pentru perfecţionarea personalului didactic în domeniul învăţării bazate pe noile tehnologii?”.
S-au formulat douăsprezece întrebări, deopotrivă închise şi deschise, în vederea colectării de informaţii suficiente despre măsurile luate în cadrul diferitelor instituţii britanice pentru întâmpinarea nevoilor de perfecţionare a cadrelor didactice în domeniul învăţării bazate pe noile tehnologii. După justificarea alegerii metodologiei de cercetare, sunt analizate şi comentate rezultatele sondajului on-line, iar apoi sunt formulate câteva concluzii.
The Third ROLE Widget Enchantment Competition: Winners Announced
ROLE Project has succesfully closed third round of its widget enchantment iteration and we are happy to announce the winners, which all receive a 500€ prize!
- classON Questions Widget (Developer: Israel Gutiérrez)
- Learning Resources Affective Recommender (Developer: Derick Leony)
- Math-Bridge Search Widget (Developer: Eric Andres)
Congratulations to the winners!
The winner widgets are available in the ROLE Widget Store:
classON Questions Widget
Developer: Israel Gutiérrez
Specification: http://www.role-widgetstore.eu/specification/classon-questions
Widget: http://www.role-widgetstore.eu/tool/classon-questions

The classON widget provides students with an interface for requesting help from the teacher and allowing them to manage and share their questions from their personal learning environments (PLEs). The widget provides students with a simple interface in order to access information in the same lab session (learning space) in order to ask questions to the teacher, check the list of questions of other students, and how many had this same issue, +1 a question that the student also have.
Learning Resources Affective Recommender
Developer: Derick Leony
Specification: http://www.role-widgetstore.eu/specification/learning-resources-affective-recommender
Widget: http://www.role-widgetstore.eu/tool/learning-resources-affective-recommender

The Learning Resources Affective Recommender (LRAR) Widget provides the list of most suitable resources given the affective state of the learner. The learner must indicate her current affective state (flow, frustrated, etc.) and her learning objectives. This information, along with the user identifier, is sent to the LRAR Service where is stored and used to generate a list of recommended resources.
Math-Bridge Search Widget
Developer: Eric Andres
Specification: http://www.role-widgetstore.eu/specification/math-bridge-search-widget
Widget: http://www.role-widgetstore.eu/tool/math-bridge-search-widget

Math-Bridge is the first Pan-European e-Learning platform for online bridging courses in mathematics. It allows teachers and students to interact with thousands of mathematical learning objects available in seven languages. The Math-Bridge Search Widget helps users to find learning objects they are interested in by allowing the specification of various search criteria to query the official Math-Bridge service repository. The Widget has two tabs: “Search” and “View”.
Cfp: Workshop on Data Analysis and Interpretation for Learning Environments (DAILE13)
Held at the 4th STELLAR Alpine Rendez-Vous (ARV)
Date: January 28 – February 1, 2013
Venue: Villard‐de‐Lans, Vercors, French Alps
Website: http://jedi.wu.ac.at/DAILE13/
Deadline for submission:
- Initial Experiential Report: 31st August 2012
- Final Paper: 15th October 2012
The main focus of the workshop DAILE’13 is to elaborate as well as integrate various computational approaches for analysing and interpreting data from technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environments, thereby serving three goals: (i) improving learning and instruction; (ii) designing learning software; (iii) developing deeper understanding of learner and teacher models.
In the spirit of “learning analytics”, we will extend the focus from closed within-system usage of computational analyses towards putting humans in the loop of making use of analysis results, for instance, in terms of monitoring and reflection support. This entails adequate modalities of information provision, including visualisation techniques and visual metaphors.
Contributors are invited to share sample datasets of user interactions with TEL environment and an analysis approach in the form of an experiential report, which will then be further developed into a scientific paper in the scope of the workshop.
Rationale
“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” (a.k.a. Sir William Thomson, n.d.). This dictum has been employed to justify the quantification of theoretical concepts of various disciplines. We further claim that “if you cannot interpret what is measured, you cannot improve it“. Arguably one can measure (almost) anything in some arbitrary way. The compelling concern is whether the measure is meaningful, useful and valid to reflect the state or nature of the object or event in question. The key attribute “meaningfulness” hinges critically upon interpretability of data.
Recent initiatives in the field of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) consider establishing an open learning environment built upon a dynamically evolving network of people, artefacts, and tools as the most important outcome of learning. Consequently, measuring and interpreting the dynamics of and interactions within flexible TEL environments based on digital traces (action logs, versions of digital artefacts) is of tremendous importance for various target groups.
In the context of open learning environments, a specific challenge is the specification, identification and interpretation of errors through error patterns. However, error identification is not a clear-cut process in certain situations as evaluators may diverge on what constitutes an error. Besides, the issue of data interpretability (and the transferability of findings) will further be complicated by collaborative learning scenarios, and community effects in large-scale learning environments with huge networks of learners are intriguing to explore.
Workshop Topics
Given the interdisciplinary nature of the workshop, researchers and practitioners from TEL, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), the Semantic Web, and data-driven research (Learning Analytics, TEL Recommenders, Educational Data Mining etc.) are relevant contributors. The following topics of interest, albeit non-exhaustive, are identified to invite submissions:
- Modelling, capturing, and processing of user interaction data in learning environments
- Anonymization and privacy preservation of real-world datasets
- Educational data mining on interaction traces and user-generated content
- Learning and Visual Analytics for institutions and individuals
- Interpretability and transferability of user interaction patterns in learning environments
- Evaluation of pedagogical models using digital traces of learners
- Effects of learning technology on user behaviour and competence development
- Implications of continuous and discrete values for user interface and usability issues
- Social network analysis and community effects in large-scale learning environments
- Feedback for teachers, learners and developers
- Process analysis (description of traces analysis and transformations steps)
Workshop Format and Submission Procedure
Contributors are invited to submit experiential reports including example datasets, a proposed approach to analyze or exploit the data as well as preliminary or expected findings. Based on a voluntary mentoring process, contributors might be supported by the programme committee members in developing a scientific paper from the experiential report. There will be two types of contributions: full papers with up to 6 pages describing substantial, completed work or position papers with 2 pages describing either results that can be concisely reported or work in progress. Papers should be formatted with the template (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates) and submitted as PDF-file to: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=daile13. Thereafter, all submissions will be reviewed by the programme committee members according to their originality, significance, clarity, and quality. An open contribution process (i.e. shepherding) will be launched to engage dialogs between experienced and young researchers in the workshop blog already at the early stage to facilitate the writing up of papers.
Furthermore, contributors will be asked to carry out preparatory work before attending the workshop. Specifically, they should prepare an experiential report (blog entry) to describe which research question is addressed and which dataset is used for this purpose. Pre-workshop activities will be arranged to discuss these preliminary findings. Highlights of these discussions will be documented and further analysed in the workshop. All peer-reviewed scientific contributions will be published as CEUR workshop proceeding (http://ceur-ws.org/).
Accepted submissions will be presented at the workshop (15 minutes) and discussed on a round table format (15 minutes). Additionally, a panel of three discussants with different expertise (Technology-Enhanced Learning, Human-Computer Interaction, Semantic Web) will be invited to present their views (each 5 minutes) on the following statements: “Which data is necessary to measure the success of pedagogical models, and how to gather this data in learning environments?”
Organisers
- Felix Mödritscher, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
- Vanda Luengo, Domaine Universitaire de Saint-Martin d’Hères, France
- Effie Lai-Chong Law, University of Leicester, UK
- Ulrich Hoppe, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
1er Congreso Internacional Sobre Entornos Digitales y Aprendizaje de Lenguas
Digitalingua nace con la intención de ser un punto de encuentro, un espacio de comunicación y un evento formativo internacional dirigido a estudiar las relaciones que se producen entre los nuevos entornos digitales y los procesos de enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas. Asimismo se constituye como plataforma para la creación y la transmisión de contenidos.
Se plantea establecer líneas de investigación sobre el funcionamiento de la lengua meta y los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje, y discusiones sobre los enfoques metodológicos más adecuados para facilitar su aprendizaje. Pretende crear espacios de encuentro y debate entre los profesionales e instituciones dedicados al secto mediante la participación de profesores e instituciones de todo el mundo. Su intención a largo plazo es dar continuidad a esta comunidad mediante la creación de un espacio estable destinado a convertirse en una plataforma para estudios y biblioteca de datos sobre la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas y culturas, y sus relaciones con el nuevo espacio digital.
Objetivos:
Proporcionar un centro de reunión e intercambio para el estudio de las relaciones entre la tecnología y el aprendizaje de lenguas y culturas extranjeras.
Abordar la situación actual de la enseñanza LE/L2 respecto al uso y desarrollo de entornos digitales. Analizar oportunidades y retos, presentes y futuros.
Promover el uso de las TIC entre el profesorado de lenguas como LE y L2
Impulsar el encuentro de los profesionales y las instituciones que trabajan en la enseñanza de lenguas.
Actualizar la preparación didáctica de los profesores de lenguas en las áreas y los contenidos necesarios para su actividad.
Facilitar la búsqueda colectiva de nuevos recursos didácticos y propuestas metodológicas que contribuyan a la enseñanza-aprendizaje de la lengua.
Crear y mantener un espacio profesional estable de estudios y espacio para el intercambio y la difusión de investigaciones, así como proporcionar las bases iniciales para la constitución de un Observatorio internacional sobre entornos digitales y enseñanza-aprendizaje de lenguas y culturas extranjeras
12 de marzo
Inicio del plazo de inscripciones y envío de comunicaciones
6 de mayo
Finalización del plazo de envío de comunicaciones
13 de mayo
Finalización del plazo de inscripciones
14 de mayo
Inaguración de la plataforma del congreso
14 -19 de mayo
Comunicaciones y foros online
18 y 19 de mayo
Sesiones presenciales
19 de mayo
Clausura
New Infographic highlights European Learning Technology landscape
Think again - Infographic of key findings from Boosting Business Agility, the 2011-12 Towards Maturity Benchmark
New perspectives from Europe's largest learning technology benchmark to help you and your colleagues Think again about the use of learning technologies in your organisation.

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