Special Issues
Initiatives
Best of EDEN 2016 (Click here to see the articles)
Starting from its origins, an important duty of EDEN has been to exchange academic and professional experience, to promote navigation on the rapidly evolving scene. Research in open, distance and e-learning is indispensable for development, decision-making and for improving quality of services. The interest for innovations is increasing as the pace and the extent of changes are dramatically fast and wide.
EDEN conferences have become major events in Europe with increasing attendance from all other continents. The Best Research Paper Award was launched in 2008 and it is granted at the EDEN Annual Conferences as well as at our Research Workshops. The selection process takes place in collaboration with the Ulrich Bernath Foundation for Research in Open and Distance Learning.
The extended scholarly works of the finalists of the BRPA competition at the EDEN 2016 Annual Conference in June in Budapest, Hungary (Re-Imagining learning Environments) and the Research Workshop in October in Oldenburg, Germany (Forging new pathways of research and innovation in open and distance learning: Reaching from the roots) have been included in this volume.
In the networked society, digital technology has changed many aspects of day-to-day life. Long-standing societal, business and institutional systems have either lost their relevance or have transformed beyond recognition. Education does not stand untouched and we observe emerging and declining paradigms, changing expectations from society, new and emerging types of informal learning experience and often operating in unsteady environments.
The powerful combination of the ’information age’ and the consequent disruption provides the impetus to look at new models and approaches for education (e.g. OERs, MOOCs, PLEs, Learning Analytics). This has taken a fantastical leap into aggregating, curating and co-producing outside the boundaries of formal learning.
We are set a challenge to understand our learning environments. There are new business models, policies, different ways to understand the technological influences, new interpretations of the collaborative and social-networked society: the learning environment, in its widest sense. Present core questions include the tension between human and machine approaches to learning – raising the important question of what in education is best done by humans and what by machines? New knowledge is needed about combining scalability with personalisation, as well as about learning context and contextualisation.
The social and socio-economic context is more important than ever. Society itself can be understood as a learning environment, with questions of learners’ connection with the community and the empowerment of the practitioners.
We thank the authors of this volume, representing seven countries in and outside Europe, for their committed and high quality contributions, enhancing further the EDEN tradition to acknowledge scholarly excellence
| Dr Ulrich Bernath Chair, Board of Trustees Ulrich Bernath Foundation for Research in Open and Distance Learning |
Dr András Szűcs Secretary General, EDEN |
Budapest – Oldenburg, December 2018
EDEN contributes to the EU's civil society cooperation in education and training