It’s time to pack your bags as Dublin is ready and eagerly awaiting your arrival. You might need a warm coat as we expect some spine chilling weather this week to conicide with Halloween, the celebration of Samhain and the world famous Bram Stoker Festival. If you’re one of the advance parties arriving in the next few days for the meeting of OERu partners or for one of the other NIDL pre-conference activities then you can expect a week of deadly adventures. It might be a little cooler outside by this time next week based on the long range weather forecast for Dublin but we can still guarantee you a warm Irish welcome and plenty of good Craic. The ICDE World Conferenceoffers an action packed programme over 5-days and the local NIDL team at Dublin City University (DCU) keenly awaits your arrival in the land of saints and scholars.
What’s New?
Over the last week we have been adding the polishing touches to the conference programme, with a team of volunteers from DCU working tirelessly to ensure that everything is ready for your arrival. We are also delighted to report that a great team of DCU Student Ambassadors will be supporting us throughout the conference. Last week the full Conference Book went off to the printer containing the final programme along with lots of useful information to set the stage for an impactful week. Also we released our conference app so that you can start engaging with other participants and some of the tools and resources we have available for you. We strongly encourage participants to download the conference app before you depart for Dublin in order to get ready for the event and to greatly enhance your professional learning and networking experience. To download the app:
Search for ‘The Event App by EventsAir’. Download to your device and enter the event code wcol2019.
Please enter the username and password you set when you registered for the ICDE World Conference. Note that login is case-sensitive so please make sure your device isn’t capitalising the first word. If you have any problems logging in to the app then please contact Celia or Judy from our great team at Happening Conferences and Events.
On other conference news we finalised the allocation of breakout session chairs and we are particularly grateful to the dozens of people who kindly volunteered to contribute to the ICDE World Conference in this important way. Without the volunteers we have drawn on over almost two-years the ICDE World Conference would not be possible. All paper sessions will have a dedicated chair to ensure that everything runs smoothly and presenters keep to time. We also received last week most of the digital poster submissions and successfully uploaded them to the conference app where you can already view and later in the conference vote on them. The scheduled to meet the poster author(s) to discuss their work appears in the conference book.
Preparations for Sunday’s pre-conference event on November 3rd at DCU’s St Patrick’s campus are well in hand where we expect to welcome over 200 delegates to a busy full-day programme. A campus map with further directions to E Block where you will find the Registration Desk will be sent to delegates in the next few days. As your registration pack for the full conference will be available on Sunday morning when you arrive we encourage you to come early as tea and coffee will be available. 
Towards the end of Sunday’s pre-conference the #Openteach project team will be launching one of their key outputs, “Teaching Online is Different: Critical Perspectives from the Literature”. This report critically analyses the international literature about online teaching and professional development and a printed version of the work will be freely available to delegates attending the pre-conference. It argues that teaching online is different, evidenced by some of the unique roles, competencies and professional development approaches required to equip online educators to teach effectively. The #Openteach project is based in the Open Education Unit in the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) at DCU and the report is externally funded by the Irish National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, a valued Bronze sponsor.
Read more about next week’s ICDE World Conference in our final newsletter, including another informative speaker spotlight, an update for presenters and taste of Ireland section, before around 800 delegates from nearly 80 countries converge on Dublin next week.
Attendance at FLAN events is free for those from FutureLearn partner institutions and our regular meetings provide an excellent opportunity to catch up with research into MOOCs, and open and online learning more generally, and to talk informally with colleagues from other FutureLearn partner organisations. On Friday we will be sharing and seeking valuable feedback on some of the research DCU is undertaking on new online models of teaching and learning.
Digital Learning Dispatches 