I was really looking forward to going to speak at the EDEN conference in Graz this week. First I felt I had a message to get across, secondly to reconnect with many colleagues I had not seen f2f since the pandemic started, and third to get back on the conference scene after an absence of over a year at international events. I have been to many places in Austria but never to Graz – though I knew from Wikipedia and studies of Austrian e-learning that it was a nice place I did not know from experience how nice. And so it turned out to be.
Additional factors in my planning thoughts were that one branch of the Bacsich clan lives about 30 minutes out of Graz and that I wanted to overcome the bad experience of a nightmarish journey to Berlin 15 months before caused by a combination of some health issues at the time, airline problems and two airport failures in one journey. Fortunately this journey, thanks to Austrian Airlines, exorcised the issues of the previous ordeal, and Munich airport on both outward and return journeys performed impeccably (unlike Frankfurt and Berlin the year before), while handling thousands of football fans.
Highlights
Although I presented a paper as I always do, I have rather different objectives from the majority of delegates. I am always keen to establish the state of the art (though at a general level, seeing through the dazzle of detailed results as well as one can). I like to hear about policy results and also the conclusions from any large EU-wide analytic projects of the sort I used to run and take part in. I also enjoy meeting current collaborators and former colleagues especially those who have been in the online learning domain for many years.
This is a blog posting, not my full internal report, so details will be brief. First things first.
- Hotel. Experienced conference-goers know that choice of conference hotel is crucial. Out of the range of options the organisers offered I chose the Parkhotel. Just 15 minutes from the conference venue, one block from the city park and with a number of interesting and friendly delegates. Good food and a garden bar and outside dining option. Inspired.
- Conference dinner. This was set in the restaurant at the top of the Schlossberg. It was very useful to have Margaret Korosec as our guide, as she had spent a Study Abroad year in Graz. There are steps (see photo) for the young and/or very fit, but we took the elevator up (inside the hill) and the funicular down the hill when it was dark – the wisest decision. Idyllic.
- State of the art. There were many presentations on generative AI. (AI was the overarching theme of the event.) I was overawed by the range of activity going on and the outputs from EU projects. A lot of effort is going into this from lots of people at lots of universities – on essentially similar problems. On the other hand I could not help wondering if some more structural managed approach to AI experiments could save money and achieve as good or better results. It’s the old top-down versus bottom-up argument. With EU economies not in great shape with military spending, climate change, aging population etc maybe a bit more top-down would help save effort in universities? An interesting contrast came from the people at Contact North in Ontario and their development of AI Tutor Pro by a team led by Ron Owston. It was great that Maxim Jean-Louis the CEO of Contact North was there also (we have met before at other events such as ICDE and OEB).
- “Just chance brought me then, if chance you call it.” It just happened that Morten Paulsen and I were at the same terminal in Munich waiting for a plane to Graz and that we were booked into the same hotel. I had decided to come a day early, on Saturday, due to worries (in the end unnecssary thanks to charming and efficient service at Munich) about a tight connection in Munich. But this allowed us to reconnect with many discussions about the history of online learning and what one can learn from earlier experiences. Fortunate.
- Leadership. It was great to hear about the Digital Education Leadership Academy Action Lab. This is the current aspect of a concept that was developed first in the D-TRANSFORM project circa 2016, and continued with help from Deborah Arnold who in fact did a PhD on the topic. So often EU projects, even large ones, vanish without trace (often even the web site fades away). Sustainability.
- Training. A couple of years ago I worked on a large OECD study which formed the guidance document for the EU-funded HE transformation project for Croatia. I have also worked on several “train the trainer programmes” in particular TTTOL – which we are considering redeveloping. So it was informative and pleasant to listen to my former project colleagues Sandra Kučina Softić from Croatia and Diana Andone from Romania speaking on this topic. At last this issue is being taken seriously.
- Virtual schools – a continuing quest. It was vital to spread the message that I am looking for several additional research papers on the topic of virtual schools (online K-12 providers) and spent much time talking to delegates from different countries about their approach to digital schools and virtual schools. Often virtual schools are “hidden in plain sight” in countries, so it takes effort to discover them. There has been no public systematic study of this area in Europe since 2012. Overdue.
Envoi
My relative in Graz had let me know some weeks before that she would be on holiday in Greece during the conference period. So it seems I will have to come back to Graz (and to Vienna and Burgenland) to reconnect with the Austrian branch of the family. On a future touristic note, several delegates told me that the train journey from Vienna to Graz is very scenic. That seems a great idea for the next trip!
Opening up learning 