In the past six months educational technology has received an increasing amount of attention in the media, as many schools and universities have begun teaching at a distance. Rather than a recent fad however, educational technology has a long history going back several decades, although recent events have catalysed uptake. As educational technology becomes increasingly integrated into learning in schools, universities, workplaces, and people’s free-time, it is more important than ever to consider how to use it ethically.

With this in mind, the Open University’s openTEL research group has initiated a project to examine the ethics surrounding technology enhanced learning (TEL). Often ethics is spoken about in relation to one TEL domain (such as AI or learning analytics), but, in reality, most issues span the gamut of topics in TEL. Data ownership is as relevant to accessibility or citizen science as it is to learning analytics. The Ethics in TEL (EthTEL) project therefore examines ethical issues around educational technology holistically.

If you would like to share your experiences and opinions on ethics in educational technology, then EthTEL is currently collecting answers to a short survey. The survey can be accessed at https://bit.ly/edtechethics and should take around 10 minutes to complete. Whether you’ve experienced educational technology as a student, educator, learning designer, researcher, or some other role, we’d love to hear from you!

If you’d like to hear more about the EthTEL project then please join us at the next Show and TEL event on 2^nd November. Guests external to the OU will be able to join using the link https://bit.ly/OUedtech.

Whether you’ve registered or not we’d love to see you join us today at the CALRG conference! You can view the schedule here (all in times listed in British Summer Time),  and join using the link https://bit.ly/OUedtech.

The conference schedule and proceedings for next week’s 41st Annual CALRG Conference are now available.

Looking forward to welcoming you all there soon!

CALRG is holding its 41st Annual Conference online (15-17 June, 2020) for all those who have an interest in researching technologies in education.

Please join us!

The Computers and Learning Research Group (CALRG), an Open University research group based in the OU’s Institute of Educational Technology is holding its 41^st Annual Conference online on 15-17 June 2020. We welcome all those who have an interest in researching the use of technologies in formal and informal learning.

Over two and a half days there will be an exciting programme of talks, demonstrations, a doctoral consortium and an ethics workshop. This year we’ll be exploring the themes of: Artificial Intelligence, Adaptive Technology Enhanced Learning, Responding to Covid-19 and Citizen Inquiry.

Keynote speakers will be Vanessa Evers (NTU Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) and Charles Crook (University of Nottingham, UK). Panel discussants will include Dave Cormier (University of Windsor, Canada), Dave White (University of the Arts, London, UK), Amber Thomas (University of Warwick, UK), Sheila MacNeill (Glasgow Caledonian University, UK) and Roger Emery (Solent University, UK).

Please register on Eventbrite if you would like to attend and we will keep you updated with the final programme.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/computers-learning-research-group-calrg-41st-annual-conference-tickets-107697052784

In the morning of 17th June the CALRG Conference this year will be hosting a special 2-hour long interactive workshop focused on ethics in TEL.The workshop will aim to have participants collaboratively produce a framework for ethics in educational technology.

In preparation for the workshop we are currently requesting people to complete a short questionnaire to help us create an initial version of the framwork. The survey has been approved for distribution by the Open University’s Human Research Ethics Committee and Staff Survey Project Panel and can be accessed here: https://bit.ly/Ethics-in-EdTech

We are delighted to announce this year’s Call for Papers for the OU’s annual CALRG conference.

We invite submissions for the 41^st annual conference of the Computers and Learning Research Group (CALRG), to be held on 15^th-17^th June 2020. The conference will be online, and open to everyone free of charge. CALRG is one of the UK‘s leading research groups in the use of technologies in education. CALRG’s annual conference provides a forum for members, as well as other researchers and practitioners in the field, to present their work. We particularly encourage research students to contribute submissions and attend to discuss their project. For research students, there will be an opportunity to present in a doctoral consortium.

The conference will consist of two days of presentations and interactive sessions across a broad range of relevant topics, including:

• Learning in a time of social distancing
• AI and education
• Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL)
• Accessible online learning
• Mobile learning
• Effective designing for learning and learner experiences
• Citizen science and public engagement
• Learning analytics
• Openness in education
• Game-based learning
• Professional learning
• Widening access and participation in education with technology

The third day of the conference will be a 2-hour interactive workshop focused on producing a framework for ethics in educational technology.

Submission Types

Contributions are invited in the following forms:

• Full presentations
• Doctoral Consortium
• Posters
• Innovative formats

As the conference will be held in a virtual environment, we encourage any submissions that would like to trial an innovative online-friendly format. We especially welcome presentations that explore the links between different research projects. We would encourage doctoral students in particular to collaborate and produce a shared presentation that explores how concepts, methods, or findings connect together.

For full information, see the Call for Papers. The deadline for submitting to the conference is now midnight on Friday 22nd May 2020. All submissions should be made through the Easychair website.

Please address all correspondence and enquiries about the CALRG 2020 conference to opentel@open.ac.uk

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #CALRG2020

In the past two weeks CALRG has experimented with an online format using Adobe Connect. Following the success of the two trial weeks, all CALRG sessions will now be held online for the forseeable future.

Join us tomorrow for the next in this online series with Dr Victoria Murphy presenting on ‘Beneficial practices and barriers to learning from incidents in the energy sector’. The session can be accessed internally from the OU here.

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.