L'atelier de recherche d'EDEN à Paris

    
     Le 5e atelier de recherche d'EDEN  
     se déroulera à Paris du 20 au 22 octobre 2008
     Il aura pour thème "le Rôle de la formation à distance et du
     e-learning dans les environnements technologiques avancées"

Invitation

Distance education, through its successive developments, from correspondence courses to mass media and present web 2.0 learning has played a central role to make learning possible wherever it has been needed.

Today’s learners choose open and distance education, for many different reasons: personal fulfilment, employment circumstances, everyday convenience or necessity, philosophical and societal views, handicap, intense specialisation away from school, isolated location, at times of emergency, and for political, cultural and religious reasons.

Educational institutions have to respond to learners’ situations, on an individual and/or a collective basis, when access to education is at stake, and when special conditions require specific answers to bring education when and where it is needed, by right, by necessity, and on demand. In such situations distance teaching institutions have most generally proven their capacity to remove barriers.

The Fifth Research Workshop, in the jubilee year of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights, intends to put special emphasis on the "rights" and "access" to education, by exploring how recent developments of open and distance education enhanced by ICT turns into a key actor when and where access to education is concerned and what are the main quests for institutions, studens and the information and communication technology.

EDEN invites European researchers, the professional community to contribute and share experience at the Research Workshop in a magnificent surroundings, in the City of Lights, Paris.

The workshop is organised in co-operation with CNED (Centre National d'Enseignement à Distance - the French national distance learning centre), under the patronage of UNESCO.

Research Questions

Researching access to education and training in open distance education and e-learning environments should explore the following questions and concerns that will structure EDEN’s 5th Research Workshop in 2008:

• How do educational institutions, public and private, with their professionals and academics develop and apply distance education to ensure access to education? What has been set up to follow these evolutions and assure their quality?
• How is information and communication technology woven into the systems involved, and in which ways does this sustain or improve access to education? What has been set up to follow these evolutions and assure their quality?
• How do students in their specific educational and training environments effectively learn and gain access to resources and support, build their relationship to teachers and fellow students, and participate in an educational social life? What has been set up to follow these evolutions and assure their quality?

Call for Papers

You are invited to submit full proposals (no abstracts are required) for presentations in parallel sessions, or posters that relate to one or more of the conference themes. For details and format requirements please, visit the respective conference page.

Papers should be submitted in English or in French by May 30th and then by August 18th 2008, through the online submission form.

Authors of papers submitted by May 30th will be notified about acceptance by June 30th. All other authors will be notified by September 10th at the latest.

Six Journals Call

The theme of this Research Workshop has been approached by 6 scientific journals - Asian Journal of Distance Education, Open Praxis, Distances et savoirs, EURODL - European Journal of Open Distance and E-Learning, JALN - Journal of Asynchronous Learning Network, IRRODL - International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning - who launched a common call for papers on “access to education and distance education” in 2007. The complete theme with research questions, and the selected articles can be accessed here. There will be a special focus on these during RW5.

EDEN  - http://www.eden-online.org