Presentations – Page 9 – Digital Learning Dispatches

Associations, Conferences, Digital Learning, Presentations

Brief Reflections on the EdTech 2017 Conference

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.

Conferences, Digital Learning, Presentations

Reflections on OEB Mid Summit

In June 2017, two NIDL staff were fortunate to participate in the first OEB Mid Summit conference with a theme of “Shaping the Future of Learning”.

While this first Mid Summit conference in the OEB series of events did not attract a particularly large number of delegates, as perhaps the organisers would have hoped, on paper the programme included a very strong line up of speakers.

Ice1

That said, on a less positive note it was observed by several conference delegates how disappointing it was to see in today’s age some of the panel discussions dominated by men. And they tended to be white, middle aged and for some reason came across to the audience as rather angry or disaffected about the state of educational technology and higher education more generally. Perhaps something to note for the next conference.

Dr Mairéad Nic Giolla Mhichíl and Professor Mark Brown from the NIDL jointly presented a challenging paper exploring the utopian and dystopian sides of the digital literacies movement. The presentation was well received by delegates and a copy of the slide-deck appears below.

Ice3 In addition, both Mark and Mairead were pleased to have the opportunity to support Dr. Larry Ragan from Penn State University and Maren Deepwell from the UK Association of Learning Technology to plan and facilitate a very innovative “throw down” challenge workshop on the theme of student success.

Ice4 During the workshop participants were challenged in groups to generate ideas to address the problem of student retention, and then had to select their best one to pitch as the most promising educational solution for potential funding and future development. We heard some excellent pitches and the workshop was a great success, thanks to Larry’s expert facilitation. Whether the NIDL has a presence at OEB Mid Summit 2018 remains to be seen.