Holiday Greetings from the IAmLearn Executive Committee

2018 has been an exciting an eventful year for the IAmLearn community. I was very happy to connect with so many of you in Chicago at mLearn 2018. I am also happy that we were able to explore some new directions for the Association!

One of the Executive Committee’s main objectives for 2018 was to refresh and re-establish our key infrastructure systems – which I am pleased to say has been a resounding success. Many thanks to everyone who has worked so hard to make this happen! Among our successes has been the launch of brand new websites for IAmLearn and the mLearn Conference series. The new conference website ensures that we will have a consistent URL, and look-and-feel, for the next several years – making it easier for those interested in the event to find all of the information they will need. We have also secured a partnership with LearnTechLib to host our ongoing mLearn Conference Series proceedings in an indexed, Open Access format.

Now, our aim is to look to the future of the Association. Our first step is our exciting partnership with TU-Delft and EA-TEL to bring the mLearn 2019 and EC-TEL 2019 conferences together at one venue in the Netherlands in 2019. We’re also actively exploring a number of other partnership opportunities, as well as ways that we can increase engagement and collaboration across our membership.

As 2018 comes to a close, I would like to extend warmest greetings to everyone on behalf of the IAmLearn Executive Committee – and best wishes for a prosperous new year!

Rob Power, EdD
President, IAmLearn

IAmLearn Executive Committee Elections

The 2018 IAmLearn Annual General Meeting included elections for three Executive Committee positions. This was the first time that we were able to extend voting to all members – not just those in physical attendance at the AGM – using an online voting system. Response to the online voting option was overwhelming positive.

Results

Departing Executive Committee Members

It is with many thanks for their hard work that this year we say goodbye to two long-time members of the IAmLearn Executive Committee. Dr. Aga Palalas officially concludes her one-year term as Past-President on the Executive Committee, after having been elected President at the 2015 AGM. Dr. Herman van der Merwe concludes his two-year term as Vice President. Aga and Herman have always shown extreme dedication to the success of IAmLearn, and we owe them debts of gratitude for their tireless service! We look forward to continuing to collaborate with them in new capacities in the years to come!

mLearn Conference News

Concordia University Chicago Hosts mLearn 2018

Concordia University Chicago was proud to host the 17th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (known in the industry as mLearn), November 11-14, 2018. mLearn is the leading international conference on mobile and contextual learning and typically attracts participants from more than 60 countries to its annual conferences. mLearn 2018 explored the theme, “Mobilized Learning: Pedagogical and Technological Innovation for Teaching and Learning.” The conference provided a forum for researchers, policy makers, professionals and educators from higher education, school education and vocational education, government departments, industries and international organizations as well as IT developers and solutions providers to share knowledge, research and practices and debate critical issues pertaining to sustainable futures for mobilized learning.

mLearn 2018 Delegates

Concordia-Chicago staff members Prof. Richard Richter, Assistant Professor of Instructional Design and Technology, and Dr. Helga Hambrock, Senior Instructional Designer, both of whom are members of the professional association IAmLearn, served as resident hosts for the conference.  

Dr. Thomas Jandris, Dean of Concordia-Chicago’s College of Innovation and Professional Programs and Senior Vice President of Educational Innovation, welcomed conference attendees and delivered the keynote address.

Other plenary session presentations were proffered by Dr. Helen Crompton, Assistant Professor of Teaching and Learning at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and Dr. Rob Power, President of IAmLearn and member of the faculty at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. The conference program was rounded out by workshops on the timely topics of gamification and artificial intelligence.

For the first time, the 2018 conference supported virtual as well as in-person attendance. To facilitate interaction by both types of attendees, mLearn introduced a bot called CONNIE (Connecting of Neuron Networks in Exploration), introducing a gamified approach to collaboration and communication among conference participants before and during the conference. A worldwide research project was launched at the conference; its results will be published in journals, a book and a comprehensive report with suggestions for further research.  

“It was an honor for Concordia-Chicago to host this conference,” said Dr. Hambrock. “We received a group of highly esteemed and well-known researchers from 12 countries including Brazil, Canada, Italy, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

“The conference delegates were highly impressed by the excellent service and well organized facilities which they experienced at the conference,” reflected Professor Richter. “Concordia-Chicago staff members Pete Becker, Amy Miller and Sodexo food service were incredibly helpful–and made the extra effort to ensure that the flags of each country represented by the delegates were hoisted on the flag posts.” 

The conference proceedings have been published by LearnTechLib, which has a readership of 100,000 members.

Shortly after the conclusion of the conference, Dr. Hambrock was elected vice-president of the International Association of Mobile Learning. She will lead the planned global research project for 2019. 

The next conference World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning will be held in Delft, Netherlands, in September 2019.

mLearn 2018: Great News from CONNIE for Presenters!

Great news for all delegates and presenters of mLearn 2018. The participation and presenter ratings of CONNIE are finally ready to be announced. The ratings of the presentations were as follows: On a scale of 0 to 5 the average paper presentation rating was 4.3 out of 5. All papers were rated at 4 and above. These results speak for the quality of the presentations that were delivered during the conference. We would once again like to congratulate Dr. Mohammed Ally whose presentation received an outstanding rating of 5 out of 5 from every vote. His work was truelly exceptional. Two more presentations that were highly rated were the paper by Ellen Rusman and Esther Tan,  , and the paper by Dean Cristol and Belinda Gimbert, Teachers as Digital Citizens: Factors Influencing Teachers’ levels of Digital Citizenship. Both received an average of a 5 from the majority of the voters. Christian Glahn and Shamsul Ariffin also need to be mentioned for their excellent presentations with a rating of 4.3. For the gaming workshop Helga Hambrock received a 4.7 and Tom Jandris the keynote speaker was voted for by most delegates with a high 4.1.

The most engaged participant on CONNIE, also with an exceptional rating for her keynote, was Helen Crompton.

Each delegate can check his/her personal rating via the dashboard link on CONNIE.

Having access to CONNIE and the exceptional work done by Darryn van Der Berg, Pioneer Pulse learning and Smartbotz has given the mLearn 2018 conference a first bot experience of its kind. As a pilot for the company they did a fantastic job and not only gave the mLearn delegates a hands-on experience of a bot “in our pocket”, but also made us aware of the value of artificial intelligence for research. Unfortunately not all delegates participated and not all papers were rated, but the “newness” of the experience may have been a “preventing factor”. The main value that we have learned from this experience is that the quality of the papers at mLearn were of a very high standard and for all who attended it was a fantastic experience.

mLearn 2018 Conference Proceedings

The full conference proceedings for mLearn 2018 are now available in an Open Access format through LearnTechLib!

Onward… to mLearn 2019!

We’re pleased to announce the official re-launch of the mLearn Conference website, now updated with details for the 18^th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (mLearn 2019)! The conference theme for 2019 is “Future Learning Through Experiences and Spaces.”

mLearn 2019 will take place at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the Netherlands. The event will be hosted by IAmLearn (International Association for Mobile learning) and CEL (Center for Education and Learning), TU Delft. mLearn 2019 will be held in conjunction with EC-TEL 2019. This will be a unique platform to bring together the two conferences and the work of the IAmLearn and EA-TEL (European Association of Technology-Enhanced Learning) communities which we hope will mark a new milestone in digital education and learning.

We hope to see all of our current IAmLearn members at mLearn 2019, along with many new faces to add to the IAmLearn family. Please share the news about mLearn 2019 as far and wide as possible – including the CfP and conference registration links!

First Call for Proposals: mLearn 2019

Alongside the official re-launch of the mLearn Conference website, we’re excited to announce the first Call for Proposals for mLearn 2019! Full Paper and Abstract-Only submissions for on-site and virtual presentations are now being accepted for:

• Long Papers (8 pages)
• Short Papers (4 pages)
• Demonstrations
• Posters

Get the full mLearn 2019 CfP from the Call for Proposals page on the conference website. Specific details on paper submissions for mLearn 2019, including access to the submission portals, are available on the Paper Submissions page of the conference website.

Deadline for Submissions for All Categories is 29 April 2019!

Want to Share Something with the IAmLearn Membership?

Have some news you’d like to pass along? An event you’d like to share? Looking to connect with the IAmLearn membership to collaborate on a project? Please forward your details along to us using the Post Message to Members link on the IAmLearn website, and we’ll do the rest!