SLERD 2022: Call for papers

7th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystem and Regional Development

2022: towards the polyphonic construction of a new normality

 

After the shock of the pandemic, learning ecosystems – and in particular schools, universities, and territorial learning communities – all over the world – are facing a new phase characterized by the search for and the experimentation of ways to their “new normality“. This is within a world that seeks to protect at best and incentivize the economic recovery that although relevant is still subjected to enormous risks. Among the main areas on which most of the industrialized countries and Europe are focusing on, there are: the transitions towards a green and circular economy, smart digitization of the production processes, social innovation, active citizen participation supported by technologies, and, finally, the education for all. In such a context, collaboration is emerging as an approach and an attitude of considerable relevance that stays also at the basis of the polyphonic construction of the future of learning ecosystems.

Alongside collaboration, on the technological side, it continues to rise the relevance of intelligent systems, generically collected under the label of Artificial Intelligence (AI); concurrently, on the pedagogical side, competences have become the goal of future education, also in the attempt to close the skill gap, which represents one of the greatest dangers for the transition towards smarter productive systems and societies.

Competences and AI, by the way, are also topics that intersect and influence each other and rise questions of ethical nature. Last but not least, they are likely to require an organizational and didactic revolution of the learning ecosystems, thus requiring to question the possible consequences in order to build a more adequate future. In turn, this step requires inspiration from best practices to leverage the advantage of the growth of individuals and the expectations of the communities.

What should we expect for future learning ecosystems? How “smart learning ecosystems” are changing? How such changes may be related to the achievement of “a better learning for a better world” as a contribution to the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ? How will they contribute to the reduction of inequalities and, at the same time, to the empowering of each individual according to his expectations and talents?

SLERD 2021 is proud to invite colleagues – researchers and practitioners – from all over the world to share the efforts concerning the development of smart learning ecosystems and contributions on how to build together a brilliant post pandemic future, where smart learning ecosystems and smart education will be even more central in the education of future citizens, and in the promotion of social innovation and territorial development.

General Topics of interests

General topics of interests can be grouped under three big themes: places for smart education, people in place centered design for smart education, supportive learning technologies and tools for smart education

Places for smart education

  • future of institutional learning
  • interplay between formal and informal learning
  • new educational models and settings
  • continuity-discontinuity of time, technology, place/space, processes in learning
  • role of, and case studies of, games and gamification in smart education
  • dual education and other alternation scheme approaches
  • monitoring and benchmarking of smartness (individual, institution, city, region)

People in place centered design for smart education

  • general frameworks and methodological advances
  • design, data and other relevant literacies
  • smart citizens’ literacies, skill and competences
  • communities and co-design in smart learning
  • sharing & participatory practices
  • open access to any resource and disparity
  • cultural influences

Supportive technologies and tools for smart education

  • intelligent tutoring systems and interfaces
  • semantic web technologies and applications
  • text/opinion mining and sentiment analysis
  • real/virtual communities and social network analysis
  • interoperability and application of open/smart data and services
  • safety & security in education
  • IoT, ubiquitous and wearable technologies
  • adaptability to educational contexts and citizens
  • role of VR in education

Important Dates

  • Paper submission: 19th April, 23:59 GMT (extended and hard deadline)
  • Notification of acceptance: 13th May 2022
  • Camera-ready submission: 23th May 2022

Submission Instructions

Proceedings will be published by Springer in the Series Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies that will be indexed by SCOPUS, EI-Compendex and Springerlink.

Extended version of selected papers will be also included in a special issue of IxD&A Journal (ISSN 1826-9745, e-ISSN 2283-2998) that is indexed by SCOPUS and Emerging Sources of Web of Science.

Papers should be written according to the Springer Instruction for Authors of the series Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies.

Submission categories: Contributions are expected to contain min. 4500 words. The max. length of the contributions should not overcome 16 pages.

Submission procedure: Paper submission is handled through Easychair. SLERD follows a double-blind reviewing process, thus papers need to be fully anonymized. Authors need to upload their papers by means of this link: EasyChair SLERD 2022