CategoriesSummer schools

JTEL Summer School 2024

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In May 2024, the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning's annual summer event, the JTEL summer school 2024, took place in Gabicce Mare, Italy. This year, I helped co-organize the summer school in Italy in collaboration with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Bologna, particularly with the help of Stefano Pio Zingaro and prof Maurizio Gabbrielli.

The event occurred at the Grand Hotel Michelacci in Gabicce. It was attended by over 100 participants at the JTEL summer school, of which more than 70% were PhD candidates in fields related to Technology-enhanced learning, and the rest were instructors or more advanced researchers.

I started going to the JTEL summer school in 2016 when I was just a master's student, and ever since, I have attended all the editions. JTELSS is not a simple academic event; is a relevant moment for community building for the TEL research community in Europe. Reaching its 17th edition, the JTEL summer school has helped generations of TEL PhD researchers escape the isolation they often face during their careers.

Like in previous years, the JTEL summer school provided a rich program that included thematic workshops, methodological workshops for PhD skills development, and interesting international keynotes. Through a Call for Sessions, the program is shaped bottom up, with the PhD candidates proposing workshops around their research or point of expertise. Compared to a classical academic conference, such as the connected mother EC-TEL conference, the JTEL summer school is more informal and certainly more fun. The objective is not only to let the participants present their research work but to spend time together, brainstorm, and develop collaborations and research ideas. This crowdsourcing of intelligence fuels research communities such as the ECTEL community.

I wish there were more events, such as the JTEL. The academia would be much more fun, social, and collaborative.

My contribution

Workshop: A Deep Dive into Multimodal Technologies for Skills Development

Contribution by the PhDs I am supervising (Nina and Stefan)

JTEL workshop: Making Presentable Research

Keynotes

Excursions, Gala Dinner, Demo Session