The theme for the ICOFE 2015 is ‘Making Learning Mobile and Ubiquitous’
Openness and flexibility are major trends in contemporary education, influencing the whole spectrum of education institutions across the globe. Technological advancement and breakthroughs are bringing about a paradigm shift in contemporary education. Modes of learning and teaching are becoming more open and flexible in terms of time, space, curriculum contents, organization, pedagogical methods, infrastructure and requirements. This change does not only happen in both open universities and conventional tertiary institutions. The rapid development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is one example that well manifests the global trend of open and flexible learning. With this background, the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) has organized the annual conferences of open and flexible education, which aim to:
- provide a platform for sharing research, practices and views relevant to open and flexible education
- facilitate networking and cross-institutional collaboration among researchers and educators in both open and conventional universities
- promote open and flexible education to enhance educational access and quality.
Following the success of the Inaugural International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2014), the Second International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015) will be held on 16–17 July, 2015 at Jubilee College, the Open University of Hong Kong.
ICOFE 2015 will explore the approaches, means and experience of adopting latest technologies and innovations, particularly mobile technologies, which facilitate learning anytime and anywhere, in a flexible and personalized mode of education to cater for the diverse needs of different learning communities.
Subthemes of the conference include the following
- mobile learning and open/flexible education modes
- ubiquitous learning and open/flexible education modes
- use of technologies to enhance ubiquitous teaching and learning
- innovations in open/flexible curriculum development and pedagogy
- social media and ubiquitous learning
- open educational resources and ubiquitous learning.
The 2nd International Conference on Open and Flexible Education (ICOFE 2015) will be held at The Open University Of Hong Kong on July 16-17, 2015.
