Welcome Conference Chairs
We are very pleased to welcome you to the 10th International Networked Learning Conference.
This year is an anniversary! It is the tenth Networked Learning Conference since the first event was held in Lancaster in 1998. This is reflected in the title of the conference - looking back, moving forward, and it is also reflected in the choice of conference venue, where the conference has now come back to Lancaster where it began (originally in collaboration with University of Sheffield). In looking back it seems fair to say that the notion of networked learning and the conference has taken roots over the years. The conference is a well established and respected international conference and provides a platform for researchers to share and discuss the latest findings and developments in the field of networked learning. In recent years several books have emerged on the topic of Networked Learning and there is a Springer book series on “Research in Networked Learning” edited by Vivien Hodgson and David McConnell. In the book series selected papers from the conference are published, but also Chris Jones and Petar Jandric & Damir Boras have recently published their own work in this area and there is more to come (the book series and call for new book proposals will be presented during the drinks reception on Monday, which we hope you will all join).
Over the years a durable and theoretically grounded, yet very diverse, understanding of networked learning has emerged. This is an understanding that endures the quickly changing waters of educational technology and remains a critically informed anchorage for further conceptual development. The term has even become more popular over the years as changes in society and technological developments have made the focus on networking and connectivity for working, learning and innovations more prominent, more ‘natural’ and embedded in our daily lives. Yet, networked learning has also changed over the years. This was nicely caught by Goodyear, Carvalho and Dohn who pointed out that in the early days focus was predominantly on computer-mediated (online) discussions and people remotely interacting with others: seated by a desktop computer or terminal. Today, and in the years to come, networked learning will come to cover a much broader spectrum of social learning ranging from formal, non-formal to informal learning and professional development; by the laptop at home, but equally on the train, in lecture halls, in small groups and in large scale mass collaboration processes. In fact, this expansion has been emerging in the conference for many years. However, what should remain at the core in these changes is the conference’s longstanding tradition of addressing networked learning and its underpinning pedagogical values from a critical, reflexive perspective.
This year’s conference is hosted by Sue Cranmer, Julie-Ann Sime, Don Passey and Alice Jesmont together with colleagues at Lancaster University. They have worked hard to make this conference a success and we would like to take the opportunity to thank them all for their commitment. This has also been with great help from Jane Bak Andersen at Aalborg University, who has been part of the conference secretariat.
Chris Jones has been an ongoing member of the steering committee and we would like to thank him for all his work over the years. Chris decided to step down from the committee after the 2014 conference however, and we are very happy to announce that Nina Bonderup Dohn has accepted our invitation to replace Chris and become a permanent member of the conference steering committee. She has participated in the 2016 conference planning and has already shown herself to be a great asset to the team.
Again this year, prior to the conference, there was a Hot Seat series and we would like to thank Jeffrey Keefer for organizing this. There was a great variety of topics and themes on offer, and we are grateful to all the presenters who contributed so generously and reached out to the networked learning community (Mike Sharples, Sonia Livingstone, Steve Wright, Don Passey, Anatoliy Gruzd, and Jim Groom). Furthermore, Jeffrey Keefer and Antoine van den Beemt have been working hard on establishing a new technical infrastructure for the hot seats and for the networked learning community in a wider sense. We hope to be able to present more about this in the not so distant future.
We would also like to thank Jeffrey Keefer and Antoine van den Beemt for their work together with Alice on the Sched App, which we have adopted again this year, and we hope you will all enjoy. With this app it should be easier to engage with the conference programme, access papers and connect with each other and to share our conference experiences using twitter and other social networking tools.
This is the first time we have introduced workshops to the conference format and we would like to thank the facilitators, Ann Hill Duin, Sao-Ee Goh, Chryssa Themelis, for taking up this opportunity. Hopefully this proves to be a welcome addition to our conference. Also we would like to thank Don Passey, Sue Cranmer and Julie-Ann Sime for organizing the doctoral consortium this year.
Finally we would like to thank all the people involved in the peer-review process. Without your help we would not have been able to select suitable papers for this year’s conference.
We hope you will enjoy the 2016 conference.
Thomas Ryberg & Maarten de Laat
Aalborg University and Open University of the Netherlands
Welcome Local Committee
We are very pleased to welcome you to Lancaster University, and to the Lancaster House Hotel, for the 10th biennial International Networked Learning Conference. The Networked Learning Conference series began here in 1998 and it is wonderful to see it return for this significant landmark event.
Lancaster University has been at the forefront of research and practice in networked learning in our online teaching of postgraduate programmes in the field of technology enhanced learning since the late 1980s. With this conference, we are particularly interested in increasing the engagement of our postgraduate students undertaking the Doctoral Programme in E-research and Technology-Enhanced Learning, so that they develop a stronger connection with the wider community of networked learning and this is happening through pre-conference online activities, conference presentations and the doctoral consortium.
Since 1998, we have seen great changes in the uses of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in educational settings, as they have transformed the way that we communicate, learn, play and work together. For our online students, this has meant faster access to the internet, mobile access via smartphones and tablets, and greater collaboration through social media and other Web 2.0 technologies. These innovations provide improved foundations for networked learning through supporting communication and collaboration between learners, tutors and resources within a learning community. While platforms may change to support technology-enhanced learning and influence design of teaching practice, the central concern remains about how ICT is used within communities to support learning.
This conference has invited papers that are “Looking Back - Moving Forward” as we reflect on the past and consider the new challenges ahead, particularly those addressing research and practice through the conference themes.
Participants come from different countries, from a range of disciplines, from many different educational settings but all with a shared interest in networked learning, to share their research and exchange ideas and experiences with the wider community. It is a valuable opportunity for us all to gather as a community and it is one that we hope you will benefit from.
We would particularly like to thank the invited speakers Professor Caroline Haythornthwaite (University of British Columbia, Canada) and Professor Sian Bayne (The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK) for their participation
We would like to express our thanks to the authors and presenters for choosing this conference to showcase their research - without them, this conference would not exist. We are also grateful for the hard work of the reviewers in providing timely, constructive feedback on papers and workshop proposals.
The local organisers would like to thank the steering committee for their support and guidance in helping to make this conference happen. It has been a pleasure to work with you.
Finally, we would like to thank Springer for their support and sponsorship of the drinks reception. A selection of papers from this conference will be published in the Springer book series “Research in Networked Learning” edited by Vivien Hodgson and David McConnell.
We very much hope that you enjoy the conference.
Best wishes,
Sue Cranmer, Alice Jesmont, Julie-Ann Sime & Don Passey
Local Organisers
Joint Organising Institutions
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