Annual Report 2007, Ghent

A first main activity of the network "ICT in education and training" was to review and organise about 60 proposals for the 2007 conference in Ghent.
At this conference, more than 50 presentations and posters were actually given.
 
A second main activity concerned the participation in different meetings in Ghent. In the convenors' meeting, blind review of proposals was suggested in order to improve the quality of contributions to the conference. However, the participants in the network 16 meeting did not feel blind review to be necessary. They suggested that double review may be beneficial to the quality of the reviewing process, which may be relevant in particular to presentations from new EU countries.

This year's review procedure was as follows. Two reviewers shared the reviewing and conference proposals were reviewed by one reviewer. In case of doubt, the reviewer sent the proposal to the other reviewer. Subsequently, contributors were asked to clarify points that needed clarification or to rewrite (parts of) their proposal.

In the network meeting it was also considered desirable to avoid parallel sessions at the conference. Participants in the network meeting felt that ICT should be the centre of all presentations in the network. If this is not the case, the proposal should be redirected to another network. This should be made clear in the submitting guidelines of the conference. Also, the possibilities of linking networks should be considered in more detail.

Furthermore, the pre-conference was considered to be a good formula for young researchers. In addition, the suggestion was made that some conference proposals could be either redirected to the pre-conference or turned into a poster presentation.

Given present developments of ICT in education and training, four topics are thought to be essential in the near future:

• Theory and research to improve ICT-based instruction and learning
• Cognitive, social, and motivational processes in ICT-supported learning environments
• Assessment, evaluation and research by using ICT in education and training
• Construction and use of ICT benchmarks in (inter)national research