February 9-10, 2022

Köln, Germany. Macromedia University of Applied Sciences

Deadline: December 5, 2021

Almost two years of COVID-19 lockdowns have forced many transformations in our daily lives. Among others, teaching had to move online from one day to the next which accelerated the need to adapt, translate and implement changes involving new skills and new resources both from universities, and from students. For any form of teaching of communication related skills these changes have multiplied discussions and also started a whole new strand of research on teaching communication.

Teaching online is not new. Indeed, theories and practices about distance and online teaching, about hybrid and embedded teaching have been developed and applied intensely over the last few decades (Cavanaugh, 2005; Simonson, Zvacek, & Smaldino, 2019), but it was too much treated as a subsidiary form of presence or synchronous teaching. Furthermore, at the time of implementing and reformulating all the teaching for online delivery, the antecedent knowledge and available studies about distance learning were very little considered (Rapanta, et al. 2020).

Furthermore, the speedy evolution of the communication ecosystem demands new skill sets and questions, too. The development and consolidation and growth of platforms, and proprietary software-based applications, cause issues about ownership and access; the abundance of mobile-laptop devices, and the possibilities of high internet connectivity conditions raise questions about infrastructures, resources, and social inequalities as well as about the availability that require not only the teaching staff to provide their own spaces for work, but also students to make their workspaces available. Needless to mention how mental health and camera-sharing of private spaces have crept into the teaching environment. All these new conditions come with new skills, new ethical questions, and new critical contents that need to be learned and to be taught: media and communication literacy, cybersecurity, and cyber responsibility, data protection and intellectual property protection, among others.

All these aspects add to the regular complexity of teaching communication, especially in the fitting and intersections between applied areas of knowledge, like strategic communication; with long sought, fast developing, and wide-ranging theoretical traditions: psycho-social informed or semiotic approaches, and management theories. Furthermore, professionals of communication are often expected to develop wider skills that trespass the theoretical backgrounds of their field. These skills include dealing with diversity in the classrooms, updating digital resources and tools, and facing an increment of undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

And yet, beyond these insurmountable conditions, teaching staff and students have managed to overcome the challenge with great amounts of creativity and opportunity, showing capacity for innovation and resilience, and they have arranged to teach and learn what was unthinkable before lockdown: sending cameras home to students; using VR and Extended Reality for teaching; incorporating online international experiences for the students, etc.

In this workshop, we invite you to share teaching experiences, research papers (or work in progress), or critical discussions in the format of 10-minute presentations. Around (but not limited to) the following areas:

• Challenges and strategies on theory teaching
• Organisational challenges of Communication Education
• Discussions about topics and new environments of Communication Education
• Innovations and developments in Communication Education
• Case studies and experiences
• Projections and future arrangements
• Implications for social justice and social inequalities
• Platforms, software, devices and technologies for Communication Education
• Students, teaching, and assessment strategies for Communication Education
• Ethics
• Creativity
• ...

The first day of the program will mainly consist of paper presentations and some input statements by external experts. We will close the first day with a hybrid panel in English language fully open to the public in Cologne and all over Europe. The second day will focus on a workshop to discuss and develop new forms of academic training for communication management.

Please, submit a 1 page abstract (max. 500 words) a.s.a.p for peer review to ecreaosc@gmail.com. We start the review process as soon as you submit and provide feedback within a few days. This is a hybrid conference.

December 5th	Deadline for Abstract submission	1 page ecreaosc@gmail.com
	Communication of Acceptance	Peer review
December 12th	Program publication
December 19th	Registration deadline for presenters
December 21th	Definitive Program
February, 9-10th 2022	Conference Venue in Köln, Germany	Starting around 13:00

Registration Price:

50 Euro - including all meals and conference dinner (two days)

25 Euro - online participation (only 9th)

Paypal: paypal.me/ecreaoscsection

If you have further questions, please feel free to contact ecreaosc@gmail.com. This conference workshop is organised by the ECREA OSC management team (Prof. Dr. Evandro Oliveira, Dr. Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat and Prof. Dr. Ileana Lis Zeler), together with Macromedia University and OSC member local organizer Prof. Dr. Holger Sievert.

References:

Cavanaugh, J. (2005). Teaching online-A time comparison. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 8(1)

Rapanta, C., Botturi, L., Goodyear, P., Guàrdia, L., & Koole, M. (2020). Online university teaching during and after the Covid-19 crisis: Refocusing teacher presence and learning activity. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 923-945.

Simonson, M., Zvacek, S. M., & Smaldino, S. (2019). Teaching and Learning at a Distance: Foundations of Distance Education 7th Edition.