#OTESSA24 (Online or Onsite) Call For Proposals (and Special Conference Strand CfP) due February 15

The Open/Technology, Education, Scholarship and Society Association (OTESSA) is excited to announce the call for proposals for the upcoming #OTESSA24 conference [PICK YOUR PREFERENCE of On-Site at McGill University in Montreal June 12-15 or Online June 17-21], with co-chairs:

Stephanie Moore (Assistant Professor, U New Mexico)
Mariel Miller (Assistant Professor, UVic)
Afsaneh Sharif (Faculty Liaison/Senior Project Manager, UBC)
Ann Ludbrook (Copyright and Scholarly Engagement Librarian, Toronto Metropolitan University and CARL)
Olaf Zawacki-Richter (Professor, U Oldenburg, Germany)
Akio Correll (Educational Designer, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research)
Ahmed Lachheb (Senior Learning Experience Designer, University of Michigan)
Francophone Normand Roy (Professor, UMontreal)

OTESSA 2024 will take place as part of the Congress Conference, hosted by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. As we will invite our community to choose the mode of their session (online or on-site). We expect our online days to be part-time days depending on the volume as we underestimated the volume of submissions last year. OTESSA welcomes thinkers, tinkerers and designers from across disciplines and contexts who are exploring the role of educational technology, including online teaching and learning and open practices for scholarship, open education, and digital technologies in education, society, and scholarship to be part of this conference gathering. Congress is a “meta conference” which facilitates dozens of concurrent association conferences (see ‘about Congress‘ to explore all the association members should you wish to present or attend more conferences than the OTESSA conference). Information on our reciprocity agreements can be found at the bottom of this post.

We are very excited to be offering not only our main Call for Proposals, and we will also be offering a special conference strand entitled “Ethics in Design” facilitated by Dr. Stephanie Moore of the University of New Mexico. This strand will have the option to publish in a special issue of the journal as well as showcase their work on our blog.  Please visit the Ethics in Design Special CFP for more information

Potential sponsors are encouraged to visit our sponsor page to learn more and to complete our form.

Conference Theme: Sustaining Shared Futures

As part of Congress 2024, OTESSA encourages researchers and practitioners to share their scholarship on the complexities that technology and/or open practice raise for education, society, and scholarship, as well as to come together to build connections, collaborations, and critical conversations at this year’s conference. Scholars, practitioners, graduate and undergraduate students, librarians, designers, makers, policy advisors, and educators or administrators from K12, post-secondary, or workplace settings are all welcome! Whatever your current role and wherever you are located in the world, we invite you to join us and contribute your experience, expertise, and insights to timely discussions about openness and technology in education, society and scholarship.

As OTESSA is a member within Congress, which is the larger multi-association meta-conference for the social sciences and humanities, we situate our OTESSA conference within the Congress theme, Sustaining Shared Futures, which urges “recognition of the interconnectedness of human existence and global action on the overlapping social, economic, environmental, and technological issues that threaten our future.” OTESSA invites a particular focus on the complexities that technology and/or open practice raise for education, society, and scholarship.

This year’s four sub-themes for inviting submissions and discussions include:

• The Transitions of Online Learning and Teaching
  Online learning and teaching has come to the forefront since the start of the pandemic. What can we learn from our rich history of online, blended, and multi-access learning as we navigate our way forward? In what ways can we build and extend upon existing research and education with technology to increase ethical, inclusive and diverse policies and practices?
• Addressing Inequities
  Who is advantaged or disadvantaged by the human and technological infrastructures and processes we design? In what ways do we confront issues such as surveillance, privacy and security? What innovations and changes in assessment, open educational resources, participatory pedagogies, collective and co-design of knowledge, inform, serve to enhance or limit the democratization of knowledge?
• Sustaining Positive Change
  In what ways can we take what we have learned about openness and/or technology in education, society, and scholarship and enact change toward a more diverse, sustainable, democratic, and just world.
• Wildcard
  We also offer a wildcard category for innovative and inventive ideas that go beyond the three broad subthemes, as long as a relevant connection is made to OTESSA.

Session Formats

There will be multiple formats to share knowledge and facilitate discussion when participating at OTESSA. Note that all formats can be offered either onsite or online, but you MUST indicate your preference, or if either works, then your rank order of preference.

• 20-Minute Sessions
• 50-Minute Sessions
• 50-Minute Panel Sessions
• Workshop Sessions (60 minutes or as proposed)
• Alt-Format (10 minutes or as proposed)
• *NEW* Poster (60 minutes)
• *NEW* Ethics in Design Showcase (60 minutes) – special conference strand with its own CfP and special issue in the OTESSA Journal

More information on session types can be found in the Guidelines section found on the Submission Page on the OTESSA 2024 Submission Portal.

OPTIONAL: Short Article (Proceedings) and Full Article (Journal) Submissions

Our primary focus is on building connected and lively conversations and open sharing of scholarship and practice in Open/Technology, Education, Scholarship and Society. All presenters have the option to submit a short practice or research article to a formal proceedings collection. We encourage submission of the optional proceedings at the same time as the session proposal as per the call for proposal deadline; however, we have an open door policy and proceeding can be added to the original session submission at any time before or after the conference as it is never too late to be included. All proceedings submissions must be submitted using one of the templates provided. These proceedings will be published on this Conference website and assigned DOIs.

Authors also have an opportunity to submit a full-length article to be considered for publication in the OTESSA Journal. Again, we have an open-door policy, so submissions are welcome at any time before or after the conference, but in order to have good odds of a journal submission being successful and published prior to the conference, we encourage a submission date no later than March 1. Please note that our journal accepts submissions from beyond conference participation and will be ending the third year of operation in September 2024, which makes us eligible for broader indexing, so now is a great time to join the OTESSA Journal as a published author.

Call for Proposal, Conference, and Submission information can be found at our OTESSA 2024 Conference Website and our OTESSA 2024 Submission Portal.

Timeline

Dec 20, 2023 – Early Submission Deadline (11:59pm, Pacific Time) for Session Proposals (and Optional Proceedings/Short Papers)

Feb-March 2024 – Decisions

March 2024 – Program Draft Published

March 1, 2024 – Full Journal Article (Soft) Deadline for publication prior to conference

March 31, 2024 – Early Bird Registration Deadline

June 12-21, 2024 – OTESSA 2024 Conference [PICK YOUR PREFERENCE: McGill University OR Online]

We have launched our #OTESSA24 website, which will be the home for all information about the conference.

To review the submission information and guidelines and submit your proposal(s), please visit our OTESSA 2024 submission portal.

Reciprocity Agreements With Other Associations

OTESSA has partnered with the following Association Members of the Federation:

• Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE),
• Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education (CSSHE), and the
• Canadian Association of Learned Journals (CALJ)

so that individuals attending one of these conferences will also have the opportunity to attend sessions at the other gatherings, provided the new online platform supports it. We will add additional associations as we expand our collaboration. Please note that individual(s) presenting at OTESSA must have a current OTESSA membership and registration specific to OTESSA to be included in the program, when announced in the Spring. Please note that OTESSA memberships expire December 31 of each year; however, we will honour membership purchases Sept 1 onward as applying immediately and for the following calendar year (15 months). We provide below an example of the reciprocity with CSSE. This agreement also applies to CSSHE, and CALJ as well.

If someone registers as a delegate with OTESSA at Congress, then they can attend CSSE Congress sessions. If someone registers as a delegate with CSSE at Congress, then they can attend OTESSA Congress sessions. This does not afford membership in either organization, however. If someone is presenting in either OTESSA or CSSE, they must register as a delegate with each organization in which they are presenting. If they are presenting in both, they must register as a delegate in both. As well, the person must follow the membership rules for conference presenters/authors/submitters.

Thank you for the work you all do to advance openness and technology in education, society, and scholarship. We are excited to gather with you to recognize your contributions to the field: please join us for OTESSA at Congress.

Fondly, from the OTESSA community, as we build and grow!

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Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash