Future Learning Community Research Networks

ICCE2008 mini-conference

Last update: July 19, 2008

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Call for Proposals ~ ICCE Workshop

We are at a critical juncture in research and development of future learning communities and the formation of international networks that support that research and development. The ascendancy of the learning sciences relies heavily on work across a broad array of disciplines that have not traditionally been associated with education. Agencies in multiple countries are looking carefully at strategically sound approaches to redefining future learning communities (e.g., NSF in the US is poised to expand its budget significantly in this area) just as the blend of scholars, practitioners and policymakers are arriving at effective but disconnected understandings of promising directions.

The official ICLS themes include AIED/ITS & Adaptive Learning; CSCL & Learning Sciences; Advanced Learning Technologies, Open Contents, & Standards; Classroom, Ubiquitous, and Mobile Technologies Enhanced Learning (CUMTEL) & Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning (DIGITEL); and Emerging Research in Technology Enhanced Learning. This workshop will speak to each of these themes. Please see the following paragraph for the rationale for a cross‐cutting workshop.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the role that blending different research communities might play in helping to shape the design of future learning communities, especially those in formal K12 and postsecondary educational environments. Each of the theme areas above represents R&D communities that will play a pivotal role in the shape of future learning environments. Other communities play a similar role, such as the arts integration research community, policy studies in learning, or neuroscience in education. What are the crucial insights emerging from one community that might be of service to another? What questions in one area might find elaboration, clarification or powerful metaphors in another? What holistic designs for future learning environments cut across these areas, what principles do they invoke, and how do new learning environments expose crucial deficiencies in current learning environments? These are the types of questions for which we will seek papers at both global and more finely grained topics. The papers will be focused in four areas. They may

a) Elaborate on broad principles or grand challenges for future learning communities. Such papers may use current R&D efforts to illustrate principles or grand challenges, but their thrust should be more conceptual and crossdisciplinary. (Broad principles.)

b) Elaborate on specific and non‐obvious connections between relatively different domains of research, connections that hold promise in hastening the R&D and policy work necessary to hasten new and powerful transformative learning communities. (More finely grained analysis.)

c) Elaborate on new models of knowledge formation and generation, social connectedness, and adaptive change. Learners now are different than ten years ago, and they will be different ten years or twenty years from no w. What is substantively different? How might well known theories or paradigms evolve? (Evolution of theories of learning.)

d) Elaborate on means to foster international virtual organizations that might advance either a) or b) or c) above? What might be the chief characteristics of such an organization or organizations? What sort of intellectually integrative approaches or conceptual tools might be devised to permit systematic crossdisciplinary generativity. Such papers might include examples of existing virtual networks, analyze their evolution for insights for the future, or propose lightweight new structures that might serve diverse research communities. How might they leverage social software systems, existing F2F and virtual conferencing, communication media and publication media to win public and agency support for organizing transformative educational structures. (Virtual organization and network formation.)

Tentative Dates:

August 20:

· Paper submission deadline

· Use the standard ICCE submission guidelines

August 27:

· Paper notification date

September 10:

· Final camera copy due

Please check back for any revisions to the dates.

For further information:

Eric Hamilton

Pepperdine University

Phone: +1-310-568-2323

E-mail: mailto:eric.hamilton@aol.com?subject=ICCE Workshop:

Organizing Committee

The workshop is expected to produce specific action items. These may include but are not limited to collaborations and research proposals.

is workshop proposal has been developed on behalf of a number of individuals who have participated in the series of Distributed Learning and Collaboration (DLAC) meetings funded by the US National Science Foundation and Microsoft Research, and held in Shanghai, Singapore, Kampala Uganda, Malibu CA, and Tuebingen Germany. It is also a followup to a more narrow but similarly themed workshop at ICCE2007, led onsite by Eric Hamilton and Naomi Miyake. This proposal is intended to reflect plans emerging from all of these events, but has not been reviewed by the committee members. Tentative Organizing Committee Members:

· Naomi Miyake, Chukyo University. President of ISLS.

· Chee‐Kit Looi, Learning Sciences Laboratory/NIE, National Technological University, Singapore. ICCE2008 Conference Co‐chair.

· Pauline Sameshima, Washington State University. She is a new arts integration researcher whose 2006 dissertation at the University of British Columbia was published as a novel and has won three major national dissertation of the year awards in Canada and the USA. Sameshima is Associate Editor of International Journal of Education and the Arts. Her work is featured at solspire.org.

· Mark Schofield, Edgehill University, UK. Schofield is Dean for Teaching and Learning at Edgehill University in the UK, the largest teacher preparation facility in the country. Schofield is on the UK eLearning Board, advisor to funding agencies in the UK, and Director of one of the country’s Centers for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

· Erik Huesca, ILCE, Mexico. Huesca is a widely recognized expert in the implementation of learning technologies and large scale ICT initiatives in Mexico.

· Michael Jacobsen, University of Sydney. Professor and Chair, School of Education, University of Sydney

· Margaret Riel, SRI International and Pepperdine University. Margaret Riel is a 2008 winner of Outstanding Educator/Gold Level from the US Distance Learning Association (USDLA) and the program that she helps to lead at Pepperdine University won outstanding online program from the USDLA in 2007. She is also a scientist at SRI International, and is most known for her work in the formation of learning communities over distributed networks focusing on educational technologies.

· Program committee chair and point of contact: Eric Hamilton, Professor and Associate Dean, Graduate School of Education and Psychology, Pepperdine University (eric.hamilton@pepperdine.edu)