Wednesday, 5 February 2014, Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) at Hilversum (http://interaction14.ixda.org/venues/).
"At a moment in time where everybody and everything is constantly interacting – through the use of networks, apps, products, media and services – educating students to design these interactions is not only needed, but also a fundamental challenge. Rapid developments in society and technology put increasingly high demands on the knowledge and skills of future interaction designers. Challenging traditional institutions, some companies have started programs for in–house training. At the same time, alternative educational platforms – such as edX, Udacity and Interaction–Design.org – are offering open access to high–level learning materials.
To successfully address these developments, interaction design education might need to reinvent itself."
"Stephen Downes is a senior researcher for Canada's National Research Council and a leading proponent of the use of online media and services in education. As the author of the widely–read OLDaily online newsletter, Downes has earned international recognition for his leading–edge work in the field of online learning. He developed some of Canada's first online courses at Assiniboine Community College in Brandon, Manitoba. He also built a learning management system from scratch and authored the now–classic 'The Future of Online Learning'.
At the University of Alberta he built a learning and research portal for the municipal sector in that province, Munimall, and another for the Engineering and Geology sector, PEGGAsus. He also pioneered the development of learning objects and was one of the first adopters and developers of RSS content syndication in education. Downes introduced the concept of e–learning 2.0 and with George Siemens developed and defined the concept of Connectivism, using the social network approach to deliver open online courses to three thousand participants over two years."
(Stephen Downes)