General Themes for 2008

• Meeting the Learning Needs of Generation Y (GEN)
  What is the best way to prepare the Generation Y workforce, also known as the Millennials? How do we convert stone-age teaching for virtual-age learners? How are schools and universities coping with pupils and students who have grown up with the Internet? How are companies adapting their training to meet the needs of a mobile, media-savvy generation? Tell us about the ways in which your organisation is preparing for these developments – what changes are you making in your company, school or university and what have been the effects of Generation Y on your practices? Are schools, companies and universities ready to assimilate Generation Y tools like Facebook and what are the implications in terms of libel, confidentiality, etc.? Is it reasonable to consider the Internet as a way to outsource memory?
• Learning on a Global Scale (GLO)
  How can companies meet the training needs of a global workforce? Are European companies and institutions drowning in a sea of US-led content providers? What are the chances for diversity in the increasingly homogenised learning world? How can e-learning play a role in stimulating intercultural dialogue? Do global games have a specific role to play in supporting social networking on a grand scale? Does globalised learning really exist? If you have a view or experience in designing and delivering e-learning on a global scale, we want to hear about it!
• Teaching and Training Skills for the 21st Century (TTS)
  Changes in teaching and learning call for new players in the field. Are traditional teachers now obsolete or can they adapt to new styles of teaching and training? What competencies do trainers need for teaching Generation Y students and are these different to teaching lifelong learners? Are ICT competency standards an adequate way to assess teachers’ potential in the classroom? What training skills do company trainers require to provide just-in-time learning opportunities for employees? In education, are the standards of teaching being monitored and supported and how can faculty and other teaching staff adapt to the needs of students?
• Managing and Organising E-Learning Systems (MAN)
  What makes an e-learning system successful? Have you put in place an innovative learning management system that really works, or are you still trying to find one that matches your needs? Tell us about your experiences with LMSs and LCMSs – are you a fan of Open Source Systems?  Do LMSs damage the learning health of an organisation? Do you believe in scalable, comprehensive organisation-wide approaches – or are you more engaged with supporting small-scale ground-up initiatives? How easy is it to put in place a more open, informal approach, perhaps one that is less obsessed with management and evaluation and more with learning results? Have you out-sourced the management, staffing or hosting of your LMS? Does this improve your return-on-investment (RoI)? Does your LMS/LCMS allow you to track learning and integrate it into your organisation’s systems and processes? Is your learning system already part of an institution/organisation-wide Service Oriented Architecture? Can LMSs play a role in Compliance Tracking?
• Sharing Real World Experiences (EXP)
  Does the e-learning progamme that you are involved with deserve attention? Can others learn from your experience? We want to feature really excellent examples of technology-enhanced learning from the corporate, education and public sectors and  thus welcome proposals which highlight really interesting examples of e-learning from all learning sectors. If we feature your proposal, prepare to share your experience in highly interactive sessions designed to focus on the successes as well as the failures of various e-learning programmes from all over the world.
• Serious Games (GAM)
  Gaming is being taken seriously by teachers and trainers all over the globe and we invite you to tell us about how you are using serious games in your learning programme. Have you found an innovative way to disguise gaming consoles as learning tools? What goes into designing and creating a good learning game?  What about the impact of touch games like Nintendo's Brain Training and Big Brain Academy –  can consumer games take e-learning mainstream? How can learning games support useful life skills related to communication and collaboration in children? Does massively multiplayer educational gaming stimulate social networking and collaboration and has it got a role to play in supporting learning? Serious gaming is often expensive to produce – have you found a system to create learning games in a cost-effective way? Join us to take a hard look at the potential of serious games for teaching and learning.
• Learning on the Move (MOB)
  Are you operating a mobile learning scheme for your employees or students and is it successful? Just how good are digital nomads at learning and what are the best tools to support them? Can you really learn from your phone or PDA? Are flexible screens and eINK for mobile devices the ‘next big thing’ for mobile learners?  What is the best way to create content for mobile learners and how useful are SmartPhones and handheld digital media players?  Can they compete with the success of the hand-held games console Nintendo DS? How successfully are developers and designers tackling issues related to Java implementation, inadequate memory and poor screen resolution? According as mobile and wireless technologies become the norm throughout further and higher education, schools and the workplace, what is the connection between formal and informal learning, work and leisure?
• Future Tools and Technologies (FTT)
  What do you believe to be the learning technology of the future? What about embedded devices and agents – can they increase learning? Tell us about your experiences with new haptic devices and multisensory input devices – are they effective? Will GPS systems supporting location-based augmented or enhanced reality make their way into learning programmes? What about wearable and ubiquituous computing – reality or fiction when it comes to learning?  Interfaces building on the success of touch technologies offer exciting possibilities, so too do the latest developments in gesture and speech recognition, have you experience in this area? Can applications like Photosynth, supporting the automatic synthesis of tags, find an application in learning? Will eBooks finally go mainstream? Can bigger and better resolution screens have an impact?
• Personalisation and Customisation (PER)
  Providers are increasingly acknowledging that learning is a personal experience – it is all about you. Have you set up a personalised e-learning system? If so, how did you do it? What makes a really good personalised learning management system? Do you include Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL) as part of your personalised assessment approach? Are personalised learning technologies bridging the gap between formal and informal learning? What about ePortfolios – can they really ensure the portability of learning? What degree of media literacy do individuals need to successful navigate their way through online learning? What about so-called personalisation technologies like data mining and collaborative filtering, can they support the user experience in improved and innovative ways? Can communities of practice really provide personal performance support?
• Designing in the Digital Era (DES)
  This conference theme is all about exploring the crucial question of what constitutes good design methodology: does one size fit all?  Is there a preferred method, and under what circumstances should you change your approach? What is the best blend? Tell us about your successes and mistakes – what really worked in your training department, university or school? Is rapid e-learning and DIY e-learning realistic? And what about today’s rapid authoring tools –  do they live up to their promise?
• Video and the Use of Imagery (VID)
  Video as a teaching tool has a proud history and a bright future if research and statistical information are to be believed. In this theme we plan to explore how user-generated video is on the increase in learning at all levels. Video has a unique role to play in helping learners understand complex processes and for the YouTube generation, video is simply a ‘must-have’ in terms of what learners expect. Share your experiences and expertise in the use of video-gaming, interactive digital TV-based learning and the value of high fidelity 3D graphics. Let us know why you think video is an excellent teaching and learning tool. What about quality issues, production standards, acceptance and ownership of video materials in the learning environment of the future?
• Web 2.0 and Social Networking (WEB)
  Are you using Web 2.0 to support your learning service? We are interested in featuring really effective uses of blogs, vlogs, wikis and social networking sites in learning applications.  What about Web 3D applications – just how successful are learning islands in public virtual worlds like Second Life? Are you using a closed Web 3D environment – is it successful? Are you using Podcasting? Vodcasting? Webconferencing?  Tell us about your experiences, your dreams and your hopes for the Web 2.0 learning world – are we really experiencing Learning 2.0 or is it all simply hype? Will distributed computing technologies including “mashups” be the order of the day?
• Accreditation and Quality Standards (AQS)
  How can e-learning be effectively blended with the accreditation process? Do you have an innovative technology-supported assessment and accreditation system in place? Does it provide accurate results and realistic impact? What about the many quality standardisation processes – do they have a role to play in giving companies an edge and in improving knowledge transfer?  What value does a quality label bring and which ones are the right ones to have? For you as a learning provider?  For your employees in terms of job mobility? For your students when they need to switch educational institution?
• Transforming Organisations (TRO)
  How best to cope with institutional inertia? Can a traditional company, university or school really make the grade when it comes to being an effective e-learning organisation? Are we better served by private as opposed to public institutions? How can organisations engaged in learning support important societal advances like intergenerational learning and informal learning? What makes a really successful learning organisation? How are technologies impacting on institutional policies and structures? Is ICT an effective change agent in schools, colleges and public service learning providers?  What role does ICT have as an integrational tool within a university, i.e. can ICT enable a 360 degree approach to answering students’ support needs?
• Creating and Customising Content (CCC)
  The creation of content for e-learning is an ever-changing phenomenon . In this theme we will talk about user-generated content, about how the whole notion of what constitutes learning content is changing, about learning objects, metadata and standardisation and about content as a reflection of our cultural heritage. Do you really believe in user-generated content  – can we depend on users to create content of an appropriate quality and on a sufficiently large scale to be really useful? Tell us about how you create content for your learners and how you deal with issues like intellectual property rights. Have you developed a successful strategy for dealing with plagiarism? How effective is your work to customise content? Are digital repositories really successful? What about the semantic web – does it have a role to play in learning?