"Into something rich and strange" - making sense of the sea-change

Nottingham, UK, 7-9 September 2010

Welcome to the web site for ALT-C 2010, the 17th International Conference of the Association for Learning Technology, which will be held at the University of Nottingham. This site will be developed gradually in the coming months as the conference takes shape.

Initial flyer for the conference [330 kB PDF].

Submissions The submisson system is now open.

Conference Co-chairs

Vanessa Pittard, Director of e-Strategy, Becta, UK;

Professor Richard Noss, Co-director of the London Knowledge Lab and Director of the ESRC/EPSRC Technology Enhanced Learning research programme.

Speakers

There will be a welcoming keynote from Saul Tendler, the University of Nottingham's Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Teaching and Learning, and Professor of Biophysical Chemistry.

Our keynote speakers will be:

1. Barbara Wasson, Professor of Pedagogical Information Science at the Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway;
2. Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University;
3. Donald Clark, Board Member of Ufi, and former CEO of Epic Group plc.

We will announce the names of our Invited Speakers during early 2010.

Sponsorship and exhibiting

Here is our comprehensive sponsorship and exhibition prospectus [350 kB PDF].

Call for papers and guidelines

Provided below are comprehensive documents for you to download and refer to prior to writing or submitting a proposal. Please read these carefully. Minor enhancements were made to the poster guidelines and tag list on 14 December 2009, these are highlighted in the document.

• Call and Guidelines for Proceedings Papers [9 page 113 kB PDF file]
• Proceedings Paper Template [4 page 56 kB DOC file]
• Call and Guidelines for Short Papers, Posters, Symposia, Workshops and Demonstrations [10 page 59 kB PDF file]

For further information, please see the ALT-C 2010 papers webpage

About the conference

Learning technology is part of the fabric of formal and informal learning. Meanwhile, a sea-change is taking place. The sea-change involves a structural and pervasive shift in the nature of the Internet. Specifically: we and our learners are always connected; the devices we use are growing in capability and diversity; the information environment and the tools and services that we use to navigate and to interact with it and with each other are in great flux.

The challenge posed for education is great. It is to increase effectiveness, productivity, and quality, whilst institutional and agency budgets are reducing, rather than just to promise improvements. At the same time we need to ensure the spread of innovations that are scalable and of long-term value, both educationally and financially, whilst keeping learners and learning at the heart of our thinking.

The ALT-C 2010 themes will be:

1. the changing paradigms and structures for learning;
2. increasing productivity and effectiveness, whilst mitigating risks;
3. responding to and shaping the organisational landscape;
4. meeting the changing expectations and needs of learners, employers, and society;
5. the changing design skills and knowledge needed to support learning and teaching with technology.

ALT-C 2010 will provide a broad forum for practitioners, researchers and policy-makers from all sectors to explore, reflect, and learn.

Key dates

1. Proposals for inclusion in the programme will be accepted between mid December 2009 and 15 February 2010.
2. Bookings will open in early May.
3. Presenters' booking deadline: 28 June 2010.
4. Earlybird booking deadline: 5 July 2010.
5. Bookings close: 13 August 2010.

Keeping informed about ALT-C 2010

Please join a low volume mailing list which ALT will use to notify you of major changes to this web site, last minute updates, key dates and deadlines. Join the list by entering your name and email address below, and by pressing the "Join" button. You may also wish to subscribe to the ALT Twitter channel.

To confirm your identity and prevent third parties from subscribing you to a list against your will, an e-mail message with a confirmation code will be sent to the address you specify. You will need to reply to this email to complete the joining process.

Note. If you previously joined the ALT-C 2009 mailing list you need take no further action.

Writing about ALT-C 2010?

If you are writing or sharing images about ALT-C 2010 using tools that support tagging, please include the tag "altc2010" - without the quotes - in what you write. On Twitter, please use the '#altc2010' hashtag - again, without the quotes. Thank you.