This year’s conference was held in Sligo (1st & 2nd June) and had a theme of “TEL in an Age of Supercomplexity: Challenges, Opportunities and Strategies”. As the conference website reports:
‘Supercomplexity’ is the shorthand term used by Professor Ron Barnett to describe the state of affairs in which we find ourselves: one of uncertainty, unpredictability, challenge and change.
This year’s keynotes included Dr. Paul LaBlanc, Professor Meg Benke and Professor Grainne Conole. Both Meg and Grainne are well known to NIDL staff as both have given invited talks at DCU and the latter serves as a Visiting Professor and member of our NIDL International Advisory Board.
A video of Grainne’s keynote presentation and many of the other sessions is available from the conference website. Once again this year NIDL staff was visible throughout the conference programme with over 20 presentations, Gasta sessions and/or workshops over the two-days. This figure reflects a sizeable proportion of the overall conference programme. A full list of the contributions made by NIDL staff will be available in due course from the research outputs section of our website. In the meantime, below is a link to a joint paper from several NIDL staff on why technology fails to transform pedagogy which reports some of the plans and recent activities underway to more fully engage academic staff and harness the potential of new educational technologies in the service of better teaching and learning.
Lastly, conference was once again well organised and reflects well on the level of innovation and range of scholarly activity in the Irish learning technology community. Congratulations to members of the conference organising committee and we look forward to EdTech 2018.
Digital Learning Dispatches 