For the last few years, MVLRI has been discussing the importance of community and making sure that we all work together to move the field forward.
Based on our discussions with members of the community, we would like to propose the idea of biannual meetings, once in the fall and once in the summer. These meetings would occur at the iNACOL (fall) and ISTE (summer) conferences, would take place over two days prior to the start of the conferences and would include a full-day preconference. The meetings would be open to anyone who would like to attend, and we would like them to be free. We are currently in negotiations with both iNACOL and ISTE staff to see if it’s possible for us to use their space for these gatherings. These two days would include networking and research sessions that are in addition to those that would occur during the conferences themselves.
Additionally, there would be a chance to contribute to a collection of conference proceedings published in a special issue of the Journal of Online Learning Research at the end of the year as well as opportunities to share your work through the MVLRI webinar, podcast and blog series.
Stay tuned as we’d like to gauge your interest in these types of gatherings and to get your feedback and input into the future activities we host.