Annual Report 2015, Budapest
Network 6 "Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures" was involved in the Emerging Researches Conference and organised Symposia, Round Table and Paper Sessions during the Main Conference ECER 2015 in Budapest. The overall interest in presenting posters is not that vivid.
Network 6 shares a culture of discussing research findings, theories and ongoing research projects including the methods in the network group. The core members (approx. 15-20 researchers) usually attend nearly all the sessions and presentation. This helps a lot to initiate profound discussions on the topics and to connect the limited findings of one single presentation to all the other european perspectives. Discussion on topics like "Open Educational Resources (OER)" are linked over years and conferences. Our members - old and new ones - apreciate this culture and the consistent number of submissions makes it possible to avoid parallel sessions.
We were able to accept 83% of the submitted papers which led to 25 individual presentations of network 6 members. These presentations were organised in two symposiums, one roundtable, six paper sessions, two poster presentations. We had one joined symposium with Network ICT in Education. There was no need for parallel sessions, which was quite helpful for keeping a vivid but focussed discussion throughout the whole conference. All sessions were well attended, on an average 22 participants attended.
The quality of the presented papers was mostly very good. The presentations in Budapest again addressed a wide range of topics: Interaction and transition with/through media, digital divide, mobile learning, media cultures in school, school in the culture of the digital age, MOOCs and beyond, the quantified self, media literacy, cyber-bullying and youth across europe. Single case studies, comparative studies, meta-analysis, theoretical and empirical projects were presented. The broad horizon of topics and of methodological approaches in our Network is held together by the respectful and fruitful discussions of the dedicated community. It really helps that a lot of our network members usually attend nearly all of our network sessions.
We noticed that our members are still not so keen to participate in the poster presentations. Two posters were visible in the main hall poster area, a different building.
Network 6 "Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures" enjoyed once again the possiblity at ECER 2015 to address and discuss research findings, projects challenges and theoretical approaches. Network 6's aim is to host researchers who see the need for a pedagogical fundament for theoretical and empirical research in the area of media education, open learning and cultural contexts for learning with media. As always we managed to address with our Network sessions our long-time network members from Europe and also to win new researchers to participate in our theoretically and empirically based discussions. There have not been any special activities to invite members of the Hungarian educational researchers to our group.