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.

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