Over the past 20 years, The European Conference on Technology-Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL)  has been at the forefront of exploring how technology can improve education in a variety of contexts. EC-TEL 2025 will be the moment for the community to reflect on the research, innovations and practices developed within the field, to gauge the impact these developments have had on education and the society at large, and to look ahead at how TEL can shape the future of education in increasingly interconnected and diverse environments. ECTEL 2025 will take place face-to-face on 15-19 September 2025 in Newcastle and Durham, UK, with the theme Two Decades of TEL: from Lessons Learnt to Challenges Ahead.

Throughout the past two decades, TEL has developed as a research bridge between educational psychology and practical pedagogy on the one side and innovative digital technologies on the other. It has been influenced by technological advancements, societal transformations and evolving educational needs. Yet it has maintained its own identity of an innately interdisciplinary field, which is informed by theory and focused on practice, which seeks to integrate correct technological solutions with correct didactical approaches, and which advocates mindful evidence-driven research and innovation. The TEL community has always had a crucial role to play in helping students, teachers and other educational stakeholders navigate waves of innovation from online platforms to data analytics, from social media to generative AI, while responding to global challenges such as the need for lifelong learning, growing mobility and diversity of students, shortage of teachers, and the call for equity and inclusion.

This milestone conference aims to explore the key factors and critical questions that have shaped the TEL landscape and promise to influence the future of learning. What have we achieved in supporting lifelong learning, bridging formal and informal educational contexts and preparing learners for an interconnected, digital society? What technical innovations and teaching practices have stood the test of time, and what new directions of TEL research could shape the future of education? What lessons have we learned from technologies that promised to revolutionize education, but did not live up to the expectations (e.g. MOOCs) or from events and societal phenomena that have fundamentally changed our perspective on what is possible and what is expected of TEL (e.g COVID-19 pandemics). How have these experiences prepared us for future challenges and transformations (like the ones caused by the advent of Generative AI). We are interested in submissions that address not only the technological breakthroughs, but also the pedagogical, social and policy-driven advancements that have shaped the TEL field. We want to foster discussions on how TEL can continue to evolve to meet diverse learning needs, adapt to societal changes, and create sustainable, inclusive learning environments for all.

We call for submissions through research papers, demonstrations, posters, and workshops. Among regular research papers, we invite two special types of contributions that match the theme of the conference, namely the milestone papers that present a detailed account of seminal TEL research and the position papers that address an important aspect of future TEL development. In addition, the practitioner and industry track will enrich the conference with works reflecting the view of TEL stakeholders from outside the academy. Finally, a doctoral consortium will be organised to run as one of the conference satellite events, offering a platform for doctoral candidates to present and discuss their research.

The topics of interest are grouped into the following six blocks:

1. Pedagogical and theoretical underpinnings of TEL
2. Individual factors in TEL
3. Technologies supporting TEL
4. Contexts of TEL
5. TEL policies, ethics and fairness
6. International, national and organisational aspects of TEL

The detailed list of topics can be found here.

No matter the length, research papers are expected to be mature research contributions to the field of technology-enhanced learning. Full research papers should clearly define research objectives and questions that fit within the scope of the conference and its topics. In addition, research papers should discuss the state-of-the-art in the area in which the work is framed, how the new proposal advances state of the art, present an appropriate research methodology, as well as present and discuss the results of the research conducted. Preliminary results or work in progress fit very well in the poster paper category. Research papers should highlight their novelty and contribution to the field. It is important for ECTEL 2024 research papers to consider both technology and learning.

Accepted full research papers will be published in LNCS Springer Conference Proceedings.

This year, the conference invites the TEL community to reflect on the progress achieved and the lessons learnt, and submit work that looks back on key outcomes, developments, projects and transformative moments in TEL. The papers submitted in this category should present TEL innovations that have stood the test of time and brought about measurable, objective and robust results that have been confirmed in a series of studies. The research reported in these papers could reflect significant breakthroughs in our understanding of the role and effect of a particular educational technology, but it can also describe incremental progress gradually adding to the existing body of knowledge and helping achieve a new level of comprehension at the end.

Accepted milestone research papers will be published in LNCS Springer Conference Proceedings.

This year, the conference invites the TEL community to submit research that pushes the existing boundaries of TEL and envisions what the field can become, what it can achieve and how it can address the challenges of the future. The papers submitted in this category should explore the recent or potential upcoming technological advancements, the current or prospective problems facing the domain of education, the new forms of integrating technological and pedagogical innovations, etc. The opinions and argumentations presented by these position papers should be instrumental in paving the way for future TEL research and shaping the evolution of the state-of-the-art in our field.

Accepted blue-sky research papers will be published in LNCS Springer Conference Proceedings.

Poster Papers report on significant work-in-progress research and developments that fit within the scope of the conference and its topics. Theoretical and practice-oriented contributions are welcomed. The submission should include theoretical background, a description of the work, preliminary results, and references.

Accepted poster papers will be published in LNCS Springer Conference Proceedings.

Demonstration papers are expected to describe innovative TEL applications, practices and prototypes aligned with the conference theme and topics (e.g. dashboards, recommender systems, chatbots, practice-oriented contributions, etc.). The submission should include pedagogical and technological background, a description of the application/practice/prototype/use case to demonstrate its relevance, results and outcomes achieved, future agenda and/or next steps.

Accepted demonstration papers will be published in LNCS Springer Conference Proceedings.

Workshops provide a venue for community building and idea generation for emerging research topics to groups of like-minded researchers and practitioners, further elaborating on how learning technologies can add educational value to the different stakeholders and contribute to effective education.

Workshop proposals will not be published in the conference proceedings.

The link for submission will be available soon.

The Doctoral Consortium is an exceptional opportunity for PhD candidates to present, discuss, and receive feedback on their research in an interdisciplinary and international atmosphere. Prominent professors and researchers in the field of Technology-Enhanced Learning will provide formative feedback to the selected papers through the review process and contribute actively to discussions at the workshop. DC is likely to be particularly beneficial for PhD candidates who are earlier in their doctoral journey, rather than those in the final stages

The submissions will be submitted for publication in CEUR Workshops Proceedings.

More information on preparing the submission and application procedures will be made available early next year.

The Industry and Practitioner Track a platform to showcase real-world implementations of Technology-Enhanced Learning by industry professionals and practitioners. By sharing practical insights, highlighting innovative solutions, and fostering collaborations between researchers and practitioners, this track bridges the gap between theory and practice, contributing to the advancement of TEL in academic and industry contexts. Industry and practitioner reports should include accounts and findings from practical experience implementing technology-enhanced learning projects. We encourage diverse formats, including i) Description of technology-enhanced learning implementation; ii) Evaluation of technology-enhanced learning in real-world implementation; iii) Reflections on challenges and opportunities in technology-enhanced learning; iv) Innovative design and development of technology-enhanced learning.

Accepted industry and practitioner reports will be published in LNCS Springer Conference Proceedings.

Full, Milestone, Blue-sky Research Papers, Posters, Demonstration, and Industry and Practitioner reports

• 21 March 2025 – Mandatory submission of an abstract (to prepare the review phase)
• 04 April 2025 – Submission of the full version
• 30 May 2025 – Notification of acceptance
• 13 June 2025 – Camera-ready versions
• 15-19 September 2025 – ECTEL 2025 conference

Workshops

• 9 May 2025 – Submission of workshop proposal
• 23 May 2025 – Workshop acceptance notifications
• 6 June 2025 – Workshop websites launched
• 15-16 September 2025 – ECTEL 2025 Workshops

Doctoral Consortium

• 30 March 2025 – PhD candidate application opens
• 16 June 2025 – PhD candidate application deadline
• 21 July 2025 – Doctoral Consortium reviews
• 15 September 2025 – EC-TEL 2024 Doctoral Consortium
• 13 October 2025 – Camera-ready version of the improved submission
• November 2025 – Expected publication date

All papers submitted to ECTEL, except Doctoral Consortium submissions, will be reviewed through a double-blind review process, meaning that author names are not disclosed to the reviewers and reviewer names are not disclosed to the authors.

For this purpose, authors must submit their manuscript:

• without any reference to themselves and their institutions;
• without any URLs to projects, products or self-developed systems;
• with relevant self-references blinded or written in the third person.

Research, poster and demonstration paper authors must consult Springer’s authors’ guidelines. The use of the supplied template is mandatory in the preparation of their papers:

• LaTeX template (also available on Overleaf)
• Word template

Springer encourages authors to include their ORCIDs in their papers.

The link to the EasyChair submission system will be made available at a later date.

Please note that:

• Workshop proposals will be handled separately, and submissions will be made using another system.
• Doctoral Consortium submissions will follow instructions that will be published at a later date.

Accepted research, poster and demo papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Like every year, the proceedings will be published within Springer “Lecture Notes in Computer Science” (LNCS) Series.

Please note that at least one of the authors of each accepted submission must register for the conference by the camera-ready deadline for the paper to be included in the proceedings.

Workshop proposals and workshop contributions will not be included in the conference proceedings. Workshop organisers who wish to publish workshop contributions or outcomes are expected to manage the process independently.

Doctoral Consortium papers will be published in CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS).

As in previous years, we want to encourage Open Science within the EATEL research community. We therefore encourage authors to document their research in a reproducible and verifiable manner, and in general to use Open Science best practices. Two best practices that we specifically would be happy to see in ECTEL 2025 research papers are:

1. Pre-registration. Results from empirical studies are more robust when researchers predefine a research and analysis plan and register it before data collection. To do so, we encourage authors to use services like AsPredicted and the Open Science Framework to preregister their research so that confirmatory and exploratory analyses can be better evaluated. The research manuscript should then include a link to the preregistration document.
2. Sharing data and code for replication purposes. Sharing data sources (always anonymised!) as well as the scripts or programs you used to analyse them can help other researchers to replicate or extend your analysis. We encourage authors to share this information by providing a link to the data and code in the manuscript.

Details on the Conference Organization Committee can be found here and supporting organizations here