Category: Research

Associations, Digital Learning, Presentations, Research

Another ESAI Digital Learning Research Symposium

This year we were delighted to continue our strategic partnership with the Education Studies Association of Ireland (EASI) to support another Digital Learning Research Symposium as part of the annual conference in Cork (20-22 April, 2017). The conference theme was “Changing Research: Working the Spaces between Education Policy and Practice”.

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The Research Symposium was designed in accordance with this theme to explore a number of big questions confronting researchers in the area of digital learning. It built on ‘The Next Generation Digital Learning Research Symposium’ jointly hosted by ESAI in November 2016 at Dublin City University (DCU) in partnership with the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) and National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL). The intention of this follow up event was to discuss some of the contemporary issues, opportunities and challenges facing the field with a critical eye on the future. More specifically the Symposium was structured to explore the following questions:

  • What research in the area of Digital Learning is currently being conducted in the Irish context?
  • How is the Openness movement reshaping the nature of formal education?
  • What are the implications of the Unbundling movement for the future of formal education?
  • What are some of the issues and challenges arising from the emergence of analytics and big data in formal education?
  • What is the role and potential of coding in the school curriculum?

In exploring these questions, the aim was to critically reflect on the impact of the digital era on formal education set against the context of wider societal changes—for better and worse. Additionally the above framing questions were designed to help participants identify, discuss and debate some of the current gaps in the literature as digital learning continues to evolve nationally and internationally.

The opening slide-deck setting the background to the symposium appears below along with one of the presentations on the issue of unbundling of higher education.

Digital Learning, Publications, Research, Scholarships, Visiting Speakers

Next Generation: Successful Digital Learning Research Symposium

We are pleased to report that the Digital Learning Research Symposium we hosted at the start of November, which attracted around 200 participants, was very successful.
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After the Symposium we invited delegates to provide feedback on the event by completing an online evaluation. Thank you to those who responded to the survey (67 participants) and 100% of survey respondents rated the Symposium as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. Similarly, 95% of respondents rated the value of the Symposium as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’, with 98% of people rating very highly the overall professionalism of the event. The administrative organisation was also rated highly and 94% of respondents indicated that they would attend a similar symposium if it was offered again in the future. A more detailed summary of the evaluation report can be downloaded from the link below.
• Evaluation report [pdf]
A copy of the Research Symposium Proceedings with titles, abstracts and suggested further readings is available from the following link:
The suite of videos provide a record and taste of the opening session and major keynote presentations over the course of the Research Symposium.