About the conference
The International Conference of the Learning Sciences is a biennial conference sponsored by the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS). The conference brings together researchers in the sciences of learning, instruction, and design in order to address questions of how we can better understand and improve learning.
Theme
The 2012 theme is "the Future of Learning". On its tenth anniversary, ICLS looks to the future. The conference will bring together academics, researchers, professionals, and educators from all over the world to share their experiences, discuss trends, and examine how the learning sciences can and should impact the future of learning.
We encourage researchers in the learning sciences and related areas to reflect on our principled understandings of learning so far and consider new and/or iterated theoretical and empirical directions for the field. We further hope that advances in our scientific understanding of learning will inform policy and formal and informal educational experiences of students, given the ongoing and dramatic transformations of society affected by a variety of digital media and communications technologies, fast paced societal changes, and the scale of significant global challenges.
Questions the conference hopes to address include:
- How can collaborative learning be effectively mediated by technology?
- How can inquiry-oriented learning in disciplines such as mathematics and the sciences be guided with technology-enhanced learning environments?
- How do students collaboratively construct knowledge and understanding?
- How can intelligent tutors that help people learn complex subjects such as mathematics and foreign languages be designed and evaluated?
- How can we foster mindful learning and metacognition so that learners are more strategic and effective when they seek to learn something new?
- How to provide the right levels of assistive guidance in collaborative and online learning to foster self-regulation in learning?
- How to teach not only for factual memory and procedural skills but for adaptive and flexible understanding that can be used beyond formal schooling and throughout life?
- How does learning vary when its participants are in the same or different times (synchronous/asynchronous) or spaces (distributed/local)?
- How can teachers productively create teaching and learning environments that support the needs of learners of diverse linguistic, cultural and economic backgrounds?
- How can the capabilities of interactively visualizing data be incorporated in learning environments so as to make difficult subjects in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, the social sciences, and the humanities more accessible and learning more coherent?
- How can the creation and use of computational models of the physical and social worlds by learners become an integral part of educational practices?
- How can the energies and motivations that accompany a learner’s interests be matched with learning resources to enable productive learning pathways?
- What forms of CSCL organization and interaction make for productive online learning communities?
- How can productive co-design partnerships between educational practitioners and researchers be fostered for scaling and sustaining innovative learning environments?
- How does the physical embodiment of learning (e.g., gesture, gaze, pointing) contribute to learning processes and strategies?
Where and when
The conference will be held from 2 - 6 July, 2012. On this, its first trip to the Southern Hemisphere, ICLS 2012 will take you to the vibrant and cosmopolitan city of Sydney, Australia. The conference hosts workshops, panels, symposia, paper and poster sessions, and keynotes by leaders in the field. It's an opportunity to share and gain insight into critical debate and new research findings across the various disciplines of the learning sciences.
Conference publicity poster
Want to spread the word on ICLS 2012? You can download a poster advertising the conference:
Poster A4 | Poster US Letter
Organising committees
Conference Chairs
Michael J Jacobson | The University of Sydney
Peter Reimann | The University of Sydney
Conference Advisory Board
- Shaaron Ainsworth | University of Nottingham, UK
- Michael Baker | Telecom-paristech, Paris, France
- Katerine Bielaczyc | Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Paul Chandler | Wollongong University, Australia
- Susan Goldman | University of Illinois, Chicago, United States
- Kai Hakkarainnen | University of Helsinki, Finland
- Yasmin Kafai | University of Pennsylvania, United States
- Paul Kirschner | Open University of the Netherlands, the Netherlands
- Marcia Linn | University of California, Berkeley, United States
- Ric Lowe | Curtin University, Australia
- Naomi Miyake | University of Tokyo, Japan
- Stella Vosniadou | University of Athens (Greece) and University of Adelaide (Australia)
- Uri Wilensky | Northwestern University, United States
- James Pellegrino | University of Illinois, Chicago, United States
Doctoral Consortium
- Susan Yoon | University of Pennsylvania, United States
- Wouter Van Joolingen | University of Twente, the Netherlands
- Nino Aditomo | University of Sydney, Australia
Early Career Workshop
- Tom Moher | University of Illinois, Chicago, United States | Chair
- Anne Newstead | University of Sydney
- Tak-Wai Chan | National Central Taiwan University, Taiwan
Pre-conference Workshops and special sessions
- Lina Markauskaite | University of Sydney | Chair
- Dan Suthers | University of Hawaii, United States
- Carol Chan | Hong Kong University, Hong Kong
- Nikol Rummel | Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, Germany
Paper Review Coordination
- Peter Reimann | University of Sydney | Chair
- Peter Freebody | University of Sydney
- Eleni Kyza | Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
- Ton de Jong | University of Twente, the Netherlands
- Nick Kelly | University of Sydney
Proceedings
- Jan van Aalst | Hong Kong University, Hong Kong | Chair
- Brian J. Reiser | Northwestern University, United States
- Cindy Hmelo-Silver | Rutgers University, United States
- Kate Thompson | University of Sydney
About ISLS
ISLS is a professional society dedicated to the interdisciplinary empirical investigation of learning as it exists in real-world settings and how learning may be facilitated both with and without technology. ISLS sponsors two professional conferences, held in alternate years. The International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS), first held in 1991 and held bi-annually since 1996, covers the entire field of the learning sciences. Visit the ISLS site.
About "CoCo" at the University of Sydney
ICLS 2012 will be hosted by the Centre for Research on Computer Supported Learning and Cognition (CoCo) at the University of Sydney. CoCo's mission is to contribute to theory and research in the field in order to discover how innovative learning technologies and pedagogical approaches can enhance formal and informal learning. Visit the CoCo site.
