Stronger Foundations, Broader Horizons
In a time of uncertainty, complexity, and rapid digital change, purposeful action matters more than ever. This year’s conference invites us to reflect on how robust digital foundations can empower more expansive, inclusive, and imaginative possibilities for education.
Now more than ever we need strong foundations and clear thinking in digital education. By addressing persistent gaps in core practice, centring people in transformation, and strengthening collaboration across sectors, we can build systems that are both resilient and visionary. Through creativity, critical thinking, and innovation from the margins, we look beyond today’s trends to shape a more connected and equitable digital future.
- Back to Basics: Reclaiming the Core
Amid innovation, are we neglecting the essentials? This theme examines how organisations, those working with learning tech, and senior leadership are re-establishing consistent, inclusive use of foundational digital infrastructure and tools, including learning platforms, assessment systems, and accessibility practices. We invite contributions that reflect on closing persistent gaps, embedding good practice, and building reliable digital infrastructure from the ground up.
- Digital by Design: People, Empathy, and Experience
Transformation means little if people are left behind. This strand focuses on human-centred approaches to digital education, asking how design can foster care, connection, and joy. We welcome insights into staff and learner wellbeing, inclusive pedagogy, ethical use of AI, and strategies that prioritise community over compliance.
- Learning in Motion: Connecting Pathways, People, and Places
Education is a journey that spans systems, organisations, and lifetimes. This strand explores how we forge stronger links across organisations working with learning technology. In what ways are digital technologies enabling more coherent, equitable, and flexible pathways across the education landscape? We encourage submissions from those working across all sectors, including FE, vocational education, adult and community learning, and work-based learning, that showcase how collaboration and partnership can create more joined-up learner experiences. - Critical Imagination: Questioning and Creating in Digital Spaces
Creativity and critical reflection remain essential tools for navigating the digital education landscape. This theme is for those exploring how culture, identity, play, and pedagogy intersect in digital contexts. How can learning technologies be used in imaginative, disruptive, or arts-based ways? How are critical perspectives helping us to question dominant narratives about innovation, productivity, or neutrality in digital practice? We welcome research, practice-based inquiry, and policy submissions that challenge assumptions, explore marginalised perspectives, or experiment with new formats for learning and teaching in digital spaces.
- Wildcard: Innovation from the Margins
This is a space for submissions that do not neatly fit into conventional categories or expectations. If your work represents an unconventional methodology, a new domain of inquiry, or an unorthodox approach to digital learning and teaching, we encourage you to submit under this strand. We particularly welcome contributions from practitioners working in under-represented areas of education, including grassroots initiatives, informal learning spaces, or roles that are often overlooked in traditional educational structures.