8th International Conference on Smart Learning Ecosystem and Regional Development

2023: SMART LEARNING ECOSYSTEMS AS ENGINES OF THE GREEN AND DIGITAL TRANSITION

Tallinn 2023, 19-20 June 

After a first tour of Europe Timisoara (East), Aveiro (West) and Aalborg (North), Rome (South), two virtual editions – SLERD 2020 and SLERD 2021 – a second tour of Europe started with the seventh hybrid edition in Bucharest and the eighth edition will be organized by the Tallinn University with the support, as for previous editions, by ASLERD.

SLERD 2023 welcomes researchers and practitioners from all over the world involved in the development of Smart Learning Ecosystems and Smart Education, as engines of social innovation and  territorial development.

At the core, the adjective smart comprises terms like intelligent, purpose oriented, supportive, artful, clever and the like. Thus, smart does not necessarily include the usage of technology (neither does it exclude technology!).

Smart referred to learning ecosystems in ASLERD and SLERD contexts, thus, does not simply mean “technology enhanced” (to include expert systems or AI). The smartness is a more complex multilayered construct related to the wellbeing of the players operating in the ecosystems, that hopefully are also in relation with the territory (see Declaration of Timisoara,  the proceedings of the previous SLERD conferences published by Springer (Aveiro, Aalborg, Rome , SLERD2020,  SLERD2021 and SLERD 2022 on-line) and the special issues (N.16, N.17, N.20, N.27, N.31, N.35, N.39, N.43, N.47, N.51 and N.55) devoted to SLERD by IxD&A journal). Smartness is affected by the improvement of any relevant aspects of the learning processes and ecosystem functioning, especially if connected with territorial development and social innovation.
Technologies are mediators. Hopefully they should be included but they are not a “sine qua non”.

The achievement of the learning ecosystems’ smartness is a process that needs a long term vision, multidisciplinary competences, an attitude to understand people and contexts and to mediate point of views, a dynamic resilience to keep on track to achieve, step by step, the foreseen goals: in short a design literacy from which to make emerge projects and processes capable to reify them, all aimed at achieving a people centered smart education, social innovation and territorial development.

Watch the video on the Youtube ASLERD channel