Digital Learning – Page 94 – Digital Learning Dispatches

This year’s 5th EMOOC conference (or known in full as the European MOOCs Stakeholders Summit) was held in Madrid (22-26 May, 2017). Once again the conference featured a very strong line up of keynote speakers, including Sir Timothy O’She from the University of Edinburgh.

Dr Eamon Costello represented the NIDL at the conference and presented two jointly authored papers on work continuing in the area of MOOCs. Both papers appear in the post conference book published by Springer.

The first paper described the Head Start Online initiative under the leadership of Dr James Brunton. Entitled “Giving Flexible Learners a Head Start on Higher Education: Designing and Implementing a Pre-induction Socialisation MOOC” the presentation outlined our initial pilot course and the plans we have for future developments in this important area.

The second research paper extended our analysis of the discourses associated with MOOCs as represented through social media. Entitled “#MOOC Friends and Followers: An Analysis of Twitter Hashtag Networks” the research investigates through the lens of actors and agency the different agendas playing out in the MOOC discourse through Twitter.

Despite less attention these days in the popular media, the conference reinforced the view that MOOCs are here to stay and they will continue to evolve over the next few years with a distinctive European flavour. The NIDL intends to shape the development of MOOCs through further developments in this area (more news to come) but unlike most other institutions our interest is driven by a strong innovation driver rather than simply the desire to raise the international profile of the university.

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.

Sligo

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.

Why Technology Fails to Transform Pedagogy: Lessons for Professional Learning from Mark Brown

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.