Academic Programme

Overview

The conference title, drawing on Shakespeare's The Tempest, was "Into something rich and strange" - making sense of the sea change.

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.

ALT-C 2010 themes

The academic programme included proceedings papers, short papers, symposia, workshops, demonstrations, and posters under the following 5 themes:

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

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