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.

Welcome back to CALRG as we start the Autumn term. We continue to hold our events online, building on the success of the CALRG2020 conference where we were joined by 100 participants from seven countries.

We have an exciting series of talks and events in the Autumn 2020 term for those in the Open University and beyond interested in how computers and other information communication  technologies may support teaching and learning.

Take a look at the events page – we have speakers from the Open University and beyond, but to bring us all together in these extraordinary times, we start on 15th October with a social, informal event – the legendary quiz by IET PhD graduate Vicky Murphy! (now appointed as a Grand Union Fellowship in the Faculty of Business and Law).

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