The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) participated in the 29th World Conference of the International Council of Open and Distance Education (ICDE) held in San Jose, Costa Rica in November 2023. Celebrating its 85th anniversary, the ICDE conference was hosted by the Universidad Estatal A Distancia, with 600 delegates from around the world gathered for the first ICDE World Conference in four years.
The conference’s theme was “Joining Hands in Peace for the Futures of Education”, with a note to the plural ‘futures’. A recurring sub-theme of the papers presented at the conference stated that there are multiple possible futures. With the increasing sophistication of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), it is increasingly likely to facilitate personalised learning journeys.
COL’s Education Specialist for Open Schooling, Dr Tony Mays, was one of nine presenters invited to provide a keynote address entitled “Riding the Wave, Avoiding the Undertow: Teacher Education through and about Distance Education.” He observed that the disruption caused by the recent Covid-19 pandemic had been profoundly disturbing for many of the world’s 85 million teachers because they, their institutions and their ministries were unprepared to pivot to non-contact-based forms of provision.
According to Dr Mays, while some more agile institutions are exploring a new normal, to the relief of many teachers, most teachers’ post-lockdown period has been more of a return to normal. The negative experience of emergency remote teaching might have confirmed a belief in face-to-face teaching as the best education provision.
Dr Mays’ presentation is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/11599/5485
