11th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystem and Regional Development (on-line format)
2025: AI enhanced learning as bridge toward future jobs and a better society
Over the past ten years, SLERD has become a venue for academics, practitioners, and students worldwide, fostering innovative approaches to education that prioritize the human factor, social innovation, inclusivity, and accessibility.
As SLERD 2026 unfolds, participants will contribute to shaping a vision that aligns technological advancements with the needs of diverse communities, ensuring that the future of education is adaptive and inclusive.
The themes for this year’s conference emphasize the overarching nature of smart learning ecosystems: places for smart education, people-centered design, and supportive technologies. Through these lenses, SLERD 2026 will address evolving models of institutional learning, the role of design and co-creation, the integration of AI and immersive technologies, and ethical considerations essential to a sustainable educational future.
The general topics of the conference reflect the above perspective, aiming to provide in-depth discourse among academics, students, and practitioners. SLERD 2026 is proud to invite colleagues – researchers and practitioners – from all over the world to share the efforts to develop smart learning ecosystems capable of promoting smart learning, social innovation, and equally accessible quality education.
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
- teachers’ and students’ continuous training (literacies, skills and competencies)
- initial teacher education
- smart citizens’ literacies, skill and competences
- communities and co-design in smart learning
- sharing & participatory practices
- open access to any resource and disparity
- educational design for all
- cultural influences
- ethical aspects in smart learning
Supportive technologies and tools for smart education
- AI for smart learning ecosystems: tools, human centered AI (HCAI). and explainable AI (XAI)
- human-computer interaction (HCI), user experience (UX), design for the experience, design processes and thinking
- knowledge graphs 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
- VR, AR, MR XR and metaverse in education
Important Dates
- Paper submission: 1st March 2026
- Notification of acceptance: 10th May 2026
- Camera-ready submission: 10th June 2026
Submission Instructions
Accepted papers also presented at the conference will be published in a special issue of the IxD&A Journal (https://ixdea.org/; ISSN 1826-9745, e-ISSN 2283-2998) indexed by SCOPUS and Emerging Sources of Web of Science (Citescore: 2.50).
Papers should be written according to the Instruction for Authors available at https://ixdea.org/authors-guidelines/.
Accepted papers will be candidate to a best paper award in collaboration with IAALDE.
Submission categories:
• long papers: 13-24 pages
• short papers: 6-12 pages
Submission procedure:
Papers submission is handled through OJS – https://ojs.ixdea.org/index.php/ixdea/about/submissions (select section: SI: SLERD 2026 – long paper or SI: SLERD 2026 – short paper) SLERD and IxD&A follow a double-blind reviewing process, thus papers need to be fully anonymized.