Interdisciplinarity in Technology-Enhanced Learning

As part of EATEL’s mission to enable and facilitate TEL Research, EATEL is organising Webinars that seek to communicate baseline knowledge at high level and spark off discussions in the TEL community and beyond.

12 December 2018, at 15:00 CET

Dialog between Lina Markauskaite and Carolyn Rosé, moderated by Davinia Hernández-Leo and Stian Håklev

The topic chosen for the second edition of the Webinar series is “Interdisciplinarity in TEL”. The TEL field is interdisciplinary by definition. This makes TEL an especially interesting research field. Yet, it also brings complexity at different levels. A challenge for TEL researchers is to properly understand what is  interdisciplinarity in our field, its challenges and implications. In the first part of the dialog, Lina Markauskaite will elaborate on the concept of epistemic fluency as “the capacity to understand, switch between and combine different kinds of knowledge and different ways of knowing about the world” (Markauskaite & Goodyear, 2016)*. Carolyn Rosé will talk about the history of the International Alliance to Advance Learning in the Digital Era, why it was important to her to work towards that as the personal objective of her past presidency in ISLS.  She will also talk about interdisciplinarity in her own research bringing learning sciences, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence together. The second part of the dialog will consist of a ‘questions & answers debate’ by the two speakers, with participation of the audience.

Dr. Lina Markauskaite is an Associate Professor of the Learning Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Research on Learning and Innovation, the University of Sydney, Australia. She received a PhD in informatics (computer sciences) from the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics (Lithuania), in 2000. Before arriving to Australia in 2004, Lina managed ICT implementation and educational change projects; and was the national coordinator of large-scale national and international studies on ICT in schools in Lithuania. Lina’s current research spans three related areas: 1) students and teachers’ ICT capabilities; 2) professional learning for complex professional knowledge work; and 3) ICT-enhanced interdisciplinary research methods. Lina’s research is integrative – it brings into a single framework research from psychology, neuroscience, design, organisational studies, anthropology, and science and technology studies (STS). 

Dr. Carolyn Rosé is a Professor of Language Technologies and Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.  Her research program is focused on better understanding the social and pragmatic nature of conversation, and using this understanding to build computational systems that can improve the efficacy of conversation between people, and between people and computers.  She serves as Past President and Inaugural Fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences, Senior member of IEEE, Founding Chair of the International Alliance to Advance Learning in the Digital Era, Executive Editor of the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, and Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.

* Markauskaite, L., & Goodyear, P. (2016). Epistemic fluency and professional education: innovation, knowledgeable action and actionable knowledge. Dordrecht: Springer

EATEL Webinars - Series “Transversal topics in Technology-Enhanced Learning”

EATEL seeks to drive community discussion that can help to maintain high standards of research quality and professionalism in the domain of TEL. In this line, EATEL has initiated a Webinar series on “Transversal topics in Technology-Enhanced Learning”, which offers an space to discuss overarching aspects related to TEL research. These overarching aspects will consider important challenges for our field that are derived from its own nature (e.g. interdisciplinarity) and from key issues in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). These RRI issues go from gender and diversity equality and inclusion, to public engagement, sustainability, ethics, and open science.