Annual Report 2016, Dublin
During ECER 2016 the members of Network 6 "Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures" were discussing a wide scope of topics concerning media, digital innovations and transformation of learning and education. We had paper sessions where research projects were presented on informal learning in different environments, media literacy, media education and civic participation, studies about the use, benefits and limitations of "smart" media in classrooms, research about mobile games or participation in higher education. A special and experimental focus of Network 6 ECER 2016 was a Roundtable, involving perspectives of five countries, presenting and vividly discussing alternative designs of conference presentations.
This year Network 6 accepted 31 submissions, which lead to 23 individual paper presentations in nine paper session and one joint paper session with NW 16 "ICT in Education" during the Main Conference ECER 2016 in Dublin. Also there was one Symposium (with four presentations), one Round Table, and a Poster presentation with two posters. 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 20 participants attended. The quality of the presented papers was mostly very good.
Network 6 shares a culture of discussing research findings, theories and ongoing research projects including the research methods. The core members usually attend most of 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 other european perspectives and to the discussions in earlier years. Our members - old and new ones - apreciate this culture and the consistent number of submissions makes it possible to avoid parallel sessions.
As always members of the Network were involved in the 2016 Emerging Researches Conference
Different from conferences years ago in 2016 there were vivid discussions during the poster session with network 6 members and the two poster presenting authors and the discussion continued later in topic related paper sessions.
Network 6 enjoyed once again the possiblity at ECER 2016 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 Irish educational researchers to our group. .