Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development

Guest Editors

 

Alke Martens, University of Rostock, Germany

Radu Vasiu, Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania

Annika Wolff, Open University, UK

 

Important dates

 

• Deadline: October 15, 2016 -> October 31, 2016

• Notification to the authors: November 15, 2016 -> January 15, 2017

• Camera ready paper: November 30, 2016 -> January 30, 2017

• Publication of the special issue: mid December, 2016 -> second half of February 2017

 

Overview

 

This special issue aims at offering an opportunity to reflect on how a Learning Ecosystems can become smarter and act as driver of regional development and the social innovation.

In fact, accordingly to the Timisoara declaration:

 

'Learning ecosystems have the potential to play a central role in helping disparate members of a community to become active citizens. Engagement, cohesion, well-being and the development of a community, in other words its “smartness”, depends largely on the “smartness” of the learning ecosystems. Ecosystems are smart when individuals that take part in the local processes achieve a high level of skills and, at the same time, are also strongly motivated and engaged by continuous and adequate challenges, provided that their primary needs are reasonably satisfied.

The duty of the technology, is to support learning ecosystems to develop their people centred smartness towards becoming incubators of social innovation and engines of sustainable regional development - to tackle the current discontinuity between time, technology, place, space, content and process (formal, informal, non-formal).'

 

This special issue is supported by the Association for Smart Learning Ecosystems and Regional Development (ASLERD).

 

Topics of Interest

 

This special issue welcome research papers discussing innovative aspects of Smart Learning Ecosystems and their role in the development of smart city and regions.

The three main macro-topics of interest are: 

 

• understanding influences, relations and models

to include: vision, strategies and processes; boundaries and interplay between formal and informal learning and new educational models; continuity-discontinuity of time, technology, place/space, process; sharing & participatory practices; use of public space & goods; dual education; open access to any resource and disparity; capacity building and social capital; cultural influences; monitoring and benchmarking of smartness of learning ecosystems; orchestration: complexity and its government; challenges by smart cities and regions to smart learning environments


• abilities, skills and competences

to include: general frameworks; design, data and other relevant literacies; relation with digital skills & competences; strategies to foster acquisition included gamification; pedagogical, social challenges; monitoring, evaluation and awareness; literacies, skill and competences of smart citizens

• techno ecosystems
to include: open & big data management and their application in education; interoperability of data & services; safety & security; privacy; trustability; IoT, ubiquitous and wearable technological supports; geolocalized information; mediation role of technologies

 

Submission procedure 

 

All submissions (abstracts and later final manuscripts) must be original and may not be under review by another publication.

The manuscripts should be submitted anonymized either in .doc or in .rtf format. 
All papers will be blindly peer-reviewed by at least two reviewers. Perspective participants are invited to submit a 8-20 pages paper (including authors' information, abstract, all tables, figures, references, etc.). 
The paper should be written according to the IxD&A authors' guidelines .


Submission page -> link
(when submitting the paper please choose Domain Subjects under: 'IxD&A special issue on: ‘Smart Learning Ecosystems')


For scientific advices and for any query please contact the guest-editor:

 

• alke [dot] martens [at] uni-rostock [dot] de

• radu [dot] vasiu [at] cm [dot] upt [dot] ro

• annika [dot] wolff [at] open [dot] ac [dot] uk

 

marking the subject as: 'IxD&A special issue on: Smart Learning Ecosystems''.

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