Keynote Speakers

Title of talk:

CSCL and Learning Analytics: The perfect marriage!…?

Time: Tuesday, June 13, 1:00 – 2:00pm (13h00 – 14h00) EST. Abstract: For computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) to unfold its potential for learning, fruitful interaction between the learners is indispensable. The field of CSCL has for many years been concerned with the analyses of collaborative process data, in order to shed light on the processes at play during collaborative learning, to understand how these processes support student learning, and to investigate how collaboration can be promoted by instructional means. However, analyzing collaborative learning processes is laborious and extremely time consuming. There seems to be an inextricable tension between analytical depth and amount of data that can be analyzed: that is, analyzing little data in great detail vs. a larger dataset more coarsely. Given that in CSCL settings usually digital data of learners’ activities accrue, great hope has been put on learning analytics to help overcome this obstacle and enable in depth collaborative process analyses at scale. So, like in a marriage, there clearly is affection between the two fields and one may wonder: what is it that attracts them so much to each other? But it is also true for marriage that after the honeymoon, when the partners get to know each other better and spend their daily life together, they may notice that not everything between them fits so well. They may even wonder: Are there still enough good reasons for staying together or should we get a divorce? In my keynote, I will explore these questions with a view on the “marriage” between the fields of CSCL and Learning Analytics. Bio: Nikol Rummel is a full professor of Educational Psychology and Technology at the Institute of Educational Research at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA. Currently (2022-2027) she directs a research program on Educational Technology and Artificial Intelligence at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) in Bochum. Nikol’s research focusses on: computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL); adaptive instructional support for learning as provided, for instance, in intelligent tutoring systems; teacher-student-AI co-orchestration and hybrid partnerships; learning from problem-solving prior to instruction; as well as learning process analysis and analytics. Nikol has acquired competitive research grants on these topics from various German and international funding organizations and has published over 60 journal articles in leading international research journals, as well as numerous refereed book chapters and conference papers on her work. She is associate editor of the International Journal of CSCL and of Instructional Science. She is past president (2016-17) of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) and was awarded ISLS Fellow in 2019.  

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Title of talk:

Critical Pedagogy in the Age of Fascist Politics

Time: Monday, June 12th 11:00 – 12:00 (one hour) Abstract: With the rise of authoritarian politics across the globe, echoes of a fascist past are with us once again signaling a looming and dangerous threat to education and democracy. In the current historical moment, knowledge is being censored, books banned, and critical ideas, if not thinking itself, are under siege. In Florida, Texas, Idaho, and other GOP led states, entire fields of studies and programs are being banned, including gender studies, Critical Race Theory, and other programs that deal with important social issues. The far-right is attempting to turn public and higher education into propaganda factories. Education has always been central to politics, but in the last decade it has become less a practice for freedom than an instrumentalized theory and practice for domination by white nationalists and white supremacists. This talk challenges this reactionary ideology and oppressive pedagogy. Drawing upon Freire’s work, the talk explores how critical pedagogy provides a theoretical and practical project for rethinking about the nature of education and politics, and how these two realms are inseparable. The talk examines how critical pedagogy can contribute a foundation for creating those public spheres and critically engaged citizens essential to any substantive democracy. Bio: Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. His most recent books include: American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism (City Lights, 2018), The Terror of the Unforeseen (Los Angeles Review of books, 2019), On Critical Pedagogy, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury, 2020); Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education, 2nd edition (Haymarket Books 2020); and Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury 2021), Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance (Bloomsbury 2022). His latest book is Insurrections: Education in the Age of Counter-revolutionary Politics, (Bloomsbury 2023). Giroux is also a member of Truthout’s Board of Directors.  

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Title of talk:

Research on Learning: Reflections on the Past and Speculations for the Future

Time: Thursday, June 15, 10:30-11:30 (10h30 – 11h30) EST Abstract: Over the past 50 years there have been major shifts and expansions in what is regarded as research on human learning. These are evidenced in individual research programs, funding trends, and dissemination outlets. Theoretical, epistemological, and methodological orientations reflect increasingly diverse approaches to age-old questions about what learning is, how it happens, and circumstances that promote it. There is increased recognition of the multiple and interacting dimensions of human functioning that converge during learning. We have seen research on learning embrace this complexity, seeking ways to make learning visible through external representations such as discourse, neural scans, digital traces of spatial and multimodal response patterns. In this presentation, I reflect on the evolution of my own research in terms of my own learning about learning and its intersection with the zeitgeist of the Learning Sciences. I offer some speculations about key issues and challenges for future research on learning and education that arise from increasingly technologized societies that embody ever-present tensions between progressive and conservative sociopolitical movements. Bio: Susan R. Goldman, (PhD., University of Pittsburgh) is Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Psychology, and Education and a founding Co-Director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at University of Illinois Chicago. An inaugural Fellow of ISLS, she has been active in the ISLS since its founding and for the past 7 years has served as ISLS Executive Officer. Throughout her career, she has researched subject matter learning, instruction, assessment, and roles for technology. Most recently, she has focused on understanding the literacy and epistemological demands in different academic disciplines and the implications of these demands for supporting learning, especially in adolescents. This work expanded to how teachers learn to engage in forms of instruction that enable students to achieve the deep disciplinary learning needed to meet 21st century demands. She has been exploring partnerships with practitioners to identify infrastructure supports that sustain teacher and thus student learning.  

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Title of talk:

Decolonizing Online Learning Through Indigenous Ways of Knowing

Time: Wednesday, June 14, 1:00 – 2:00pm (13h00 – 14h00) EST Abstract: With the proliferation of digital technologies, there exists the assumption that Indigenous people and their knowledges are incompatible with modernity, learning, and technology. As well, efforts to represent Indigenous ways of knowing in online spaces are certainly fraught with intellectual, ethical, culture, and technical challenges. However, as emerging digital technologies make for new types of access and modes of curating, viewing/listening, displaying, and transmitting Indigenous knowledges, there is growing recognition of the contribution of Indigenous ways of knowing teaching and learning. This presentation draws on a set of curriculum projects in teacher education to demonstrate reconfigurations of colonial learning practices that are more respectful, build from Indigenous engagement, and uplift Indigenous priorities of resurgence, reclamation, and sovereignty. Bio: Dr. Jan Hare is an Anishinaabe-kwe scholar and educator from the M’Chigeeng First Nation, located in northern Ontario, Canada. She is Professor and Dean pro tem in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. In addition, she holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Indigenous Pedagogy. Her research is concerned with transforming educational institutions from early childhood, K-12 schooling through to post-secondary education by centering Indigenous knowledges and pedagogies in teaching and learning. This work has led to the development of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), Reconciliation Through Indigenous Education, which has been taken by over 70,000 people worldwide. Her current research explores the instructional practices of post-secondary educators incorporating Indigenous knowledges and perspectives in to higher education classrooms through collaborative inquiry. In addition, she is engaged in theorizing Indigenous-led teacher education through programs narrating their own story bundles.