Open All Hours: The Power of Open for Education’s Future

Given the key roles many of our community are taking on at this time, the Emerging Learning Design Executive Board has decided to postpone our 2020 conference, originally scheduled for May. We believe it would be difficult to organize a conference at this time, even in an online format.

We want everyone to know that we are not going to let COVID sideline entirely the important place ELD has in our year’s activities. Look for an upcoming announcement about an online event later this year. Until then, the submission window remains open and we welcome submissions about what is emerging in your learning design life.

POSTPONED

As we enter a new decade of the budding millennium, open has permeated all areas of academia. In research, funding agencies and faculty senates are mandating open access policies throughout the world. As storage costs have fallen and download speeds have increased, open data is gaining a foothold by both making research data available and opening up new avenues for further analysis. Open source and open development continues to be a strong and active component in a range of technologies. Meanwhile, across a wide range of colleges and universities open textbooks and open educational resources are gaining publicity as the rising cost of higher education has become a topic for nightly news. All of this openness across higher education has been and will continue to impact pedagogy for the foreseeable future.

Join Emerging Learning Design in an exploration of what it means to be open in the twenty-twenties and how open in all its forms has the power to revamp teaching and learning.

In the past year, the Emerging Learning Design Executive Board has reflected upon our decade of experience as well as looked outward to understand the changing needs and stresses on faculty, staff, and students today. The ELD Board is excited to announce a new format for the 10th anniversary of the organization. For the last 9 years, the ELD conference has morphed and changed as opportunities, trends, and partners have come and gone. We hope this new model will excite our long-time followers as well as provide opportunities for new voices to be heard.

In order to leverage our strengths while providing a flexible environment for those unable to travel, we are moving to a hybrid model for the 2020 conference. This hybrid model is in two respects:

1. We will have both in-person and online sessions - the in-person sessions will be live-streamed for those that register for our online-only offering. Additionally, accepted presenters will have the opportunity to participate fully online as well.
2. Taking a cue from our successful Donuts and Design sessions during the 2019 conference, we will continue to host both peer-reviewed and unconference sessions throughout the conference. We hope moving to this model will both alleviate the high costs for professional travel that many of us face as well as provide new opportunities to explore scholarship and development in 2020 and beyond.

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