Call for Papers – 2014 OCWC Global Conference

The 10^th annual OpenCourseWare Consortium Global Conference will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on April 23-25, 2014. The OpenCourseWare Consortium and the Knowledge for All Foundation are jointly organizing the event whose special theme is Open Education for a Multicultural World.

We invite submissions of papers on all topics related to open education for the conference proceedings, and proposals for workshops.

The 2014 conference will be organized around four tracks:

• Research and Technology. In this track, we expect to explore new technologies allowing scaling and sharing of Open Educational Resources in a faster or more economical way, to index the multimodal and multilingual material, or to navigate and remix available material. Researchers and developers are encouraged to present on-going research as well as running prototypes.
• Open Educational Policies, in which policy issues and their impact on open educational practice will be discussed. Licensing issues, alternative business models, cooperative efforts and governmental funding can all be discussed in this track. The focus of such sessions should be on lessons learned rather than a recounting of steps taken.
• Pedagogical Impact will allow users to present novel uses of Open Educational Resources and their impact on education. We welcome analysis of the impact of Open Educational Resources on the learning process itself, as well as deployment of OERs in MOOCs, flipped classrooms, hybrid educational approaches and online education.
• Finally, a project dissemination track will allow actors (teams, projects, companies) currently involved in open education projects in Europe to present the results of their work.

For the three first tracks, we encourage the submission of papers, which will be reviewed by the OCWC 2014 Programme Committee. For the project dissemination track, projects can be presented as posters or as full presentations. Please contact the track chair, Mitja Jermol to be considered for inclusion in this track.

Timeline

• Submissions Due: December 1, 2013
• Acceptance Announcements: Week of January 13, 2014
• Speaker Registration Deadline: February 27, 2014
• Final Papers Due: March 15, 2014

Submission Information

Papers (written in English) should be submitted through the conference website: http://conference.ocwconsortium.org/2014/easychair/. Submissions for the OCWC Global 2014 conference must include a short description (140 characters) and an extended abstract (1000-2000 words, approximately 2-4 pages). For the Research and Technology track, the authors should ensure that enough details are given to be able to assess the novelty or the impact of the proposal.

In all cases, authors may propose a different format for their contribution to the organizers.

All presenters are required to register for the conference. Registration will open on November 15, 2013.

Review Criteria

We encourage proposals that are original, engaging, significant, clear and relevant.

• Original: the paper explores a new idea, project or issue; discusses existing research with promise of new insight, discusses new research; or presents new ways of considering existing information
• Engaging: presentation format will involve the audience in some way, or has high potential to attract conference attendees by addressing needs of the community
• Significant: the paper raises and discusses issues important to improving the effectiveness and/or sustainability of open education efforts, and its contents can be broadly disseminated and understood
• Quality: claims are supported by sufficient data; claims draw upon relevant literature; and limitations are described honestly
• Clear: the intended outcomes of the paper are easily understood
• Relevant: the paper addresses one or more of the themes of the conference

Publication in Proceedings and Filming

The accepted extended abstracts will be made available on the conference website. During the conference, the different talks will be filmed and made available at http://videolectures.net.  Conference proceedings will be available after the conference.

Journal Publication Opportunity

Open Praxis, a peer-reviewed open access journal, published by the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE), focusing on research and innovation in open, flexible and distance learning, will publish a selection of papers from the OCWC Global 2014 conference. Articles selected for publication must meet the established criteria of the journal, which can be found at http://www.openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/about/editorialPolicies.

If you would like your paper considered for publication in the April-June 2014 edition of Open Praxis, please follow these special guidelines:

Full papers must be submitted by 1 December 2013 through the conference website as described above. You must indicate in your abstract that you would like your paper to be reviewed for publication in Open Praxis.

Papers submitted for publication should follow the word count guidelines for Open Praxis:

• Research articles (approx. 5000 words) may focus on concepts, analysis and results of studies regarding open and distance education.
• Innovative practice articles (approx. 3000 words) may provide analysis of concrete experiences.

All papers must be submitted in English. Several OCW Consortium members have volunteered to assist with English language editing. If you would like such assistance, please contact conference@ocwconsortium.org no later than 15 October 2013.

Papers submitted for publication will follow a separate review process. Submissions will first be reviewed by the OCWC 2014 Programme Committee for inclusion in the conference. Those accepted for presentation will then be forwarded to Open Praxis for peer review and possible inclusion in the April-June 2014 edition. Authors will be notified during the week of January 13, 2014 if their paper has been accepted for presentation at the OCWC 2014 conference. Authors will be notified by March 15, 2014 if the paper has been accepted for publication. Additional revisions may be requested during the peer review process.

Inclusion in Video Journal

Selected presentations will have the opportunity to be included in The Video Journal of Open Education.  This journal will be produced following the conference.  Selected presenters will have the opportunity to create enhanced videos of their session during the conference to be edited for the video journal.  If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact us at  conference@ocwconsortium.org for more information.

License

All submissions and presentations must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Authors indicate agreement to these terms by submitting a proposal.