CALRG kicks off the year with three great sessions in January:

• 16th Jan: An informal session with cake and the opportunity to provide requests to the CALRG team on what sessions you’d like to see this year
• 23rd Jan: Khadija Mohamud talks about her research in ‘Digital technologies for development: A case study of Internet kiosks in Uganda’
• 30th January: Professor Agenes Kukulska-Hulme joins us to discuss ‘Intelligent assistants in digital learning: How language learners may lead the way (and where are we heading?)

CALRG will be finishing 2019 on a high note with two great sessions planned before we break for Christmas.

• • Dec 5th: Power, roles and adding value reflecting on the challengers of working between universities and small community activist groups on an international research project
    Dr. Mark Gavad will talk about the balance, benefits, and blockers that came with a highly diverse project team in the three year EU funded MAZI project.

• Dec 12th: The EDUCATE Project
  Dr.s Kim Issroff and Canan Blake join us from UCL to discuss their work on EDUCATE, a business and research training programme for emerging London based EdTech companies.

Due to the UCU strike observed by the Open University next week’s CALRG session will be cancelled. The advertised session on intelligent assisstants and language learning will be rescheduled for early 2020. Please check the events page for the most recent calendar of events.

CALRG has a great line-up scheduled for November. Please join us for the following sessions:

– 7th: Nashwa Ismail will tells us about her experiences in Thailand in ‘Tricky Topics: Removing the Stumbling Blocks in Learning and Teaching’
– 14th: Our monthly informal event. This time CALRG will be hosting research themed speed chatting.
– 21st: In our regular ‘you heard it hear first’ series Irina Rets will present her research on the accessibility of OERs to non-native English speakers
– 28th: Agnes Kukulska-Hulme finishes the month with a presentation on intelligent assisstants like Alexa and Google Home and their potential for language learners

Join us tomorrow as Jo Buxton conducts the first workshop of the academic year on ‘Designing for inclusivity: making tutorials and group work accessible for students with sight and/or hearing impairments’.

Our 2019 Autumn term CALRG programme starts on the 10th October when we kick off with an informal get together – particularly for our new students to get to meet other CALRG members. So a big welcome back to all CALRG members and a particular welcome to our new research students.
More information about CALRG can be found at https://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/CALRG/

The official schedule for the CALRG 2019 Conference has now been released. It can be download using the follow link:CALRG 2019 Conference proceedings.

There is still time to register for the conference via Eventbrite.

As we head towards the end of 2018, CALRG aims to finish the year on a high with a month devoted to IET’s Professional and Digital Learning group. November kicked off yesterday with a seminar detailing four projects that the group are involved: how energy companies learn following incidents, strategies employed by finance professionals to learn during times of uncertainty, tensions arising in large-scale changes of higher educational institutes, and the use of social media by medical students as a way of learning.

The schedule is slightly changed from the normal CALRG format this month to avoid clashes with other events. But be sure to come along and take part in the rest of the PDL CALRG month:

• 8th November – Cake week: This time the theme will be balloon debates
• 15th November – Workshop: PDL will present various ideas on upcoming bids for people to discuss and get involved in
• 29th November – Panel discussion: We invite academics from various backgrounds within the learning sciences to discuss a question central to the PDL group – ‘what is learning’

Looking forward to seeing you all then.
Doug, Wayne, Vicky, Jake – your CALRG organising committee

As one of the UK’s leading and longest running research groups in this area, we are looking forward to celebrating our 40th year with an event at the Open University on 19th October 2018 at which we will be welcoming back former members and friends. We have planned an exciting day of talks looking back at the group’s history, tracing the trends in our research over the years to help us look forward to the future of learning with computers.

Tickets are available on EventBrite. We have sold out of tickets to attend in person, but you can still register for the livestream, and we have had the odd cancellation, so it’s worth a look.

We are also working on a book to mark the event – look out for more information!

We are excited to announce the start of the new programme for 2018-2019! This year we will be aiming on delivering a mixture of informative updates from around the university, practical workshops, interactive panels, and of course cake.

Last year the CALRG team invited a huge range of speakers to spread fresh ideas and approaches to research. The team this year aims to continue and build on that theme, with a focus on varying the format of the weekly sessions.

In October you can look forward to:

• Thursday 11th – Kick-off and seminar from visiting PhD student Laura Thomas: Beginning teachers’ professional support: A mixed methods social network study
• Friday 19th – CALRG 40th anniversary conference
• Thursday 25th – Cake drop featuring some getting-to-know-you-and-your-research games facilitated by Doug Clow

Looking forward to an engaging year,
Doug, Wayne, Vicky, Jake – your new CALRG organising committee