Learnovation Summit 2023
“Learner disruption | Technology evolution” was the tagline for this year’s Learnovation Global Learning Summit, held on October 5th in Dublin. The summit is organised annually by the Learnovate Centre, based out of TCD, and supported by Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland.
Brickfield was delighted to be silver sponsors at this year’s summit. Although not everyone at the event uses Moodle LMS, most of our accessibility services are available to all organisations, regardless of their Learning Management System (LMS).
As a provider of thought leadership to the world’s L&D community, Learnovate Centre’s summit didn’t disappoint with its wealth of stellar speakers, lively and engaging sessions, conducive atmosphere, and well-paced schedule, getting attendees to focus on their learning strategies and success criteria.
Lunch and coffee breaks (with delicious refreshments) brought about some excellent discussions with attendees at our stand, talking about how they could improve both their internal staff courses, and course content in general, to be more inclusive and to build the capacity of their staff with enhanced awareness, understanding, and skills on digital accessibility.
A core theme that came up repeatedly was how to make learning through SCORM more accessible, not just within the learning object itself, but also what was a suitable alternative. In this instance, we promote providing a full word document alternative of the content, with transcripts for video and audio and other interactive aspects, as these all enable learners to better use assistive technology and/or create print copies with the alternative format.
Summit Overview
The day began with a thought-provoking session on The Evolution of AI in learning – delivered by Dr. Patricia Scanlon, Ireland’s AI Ambassador & founder of SoapBox Labs, which provided some insights into the AI Act and the protection of students.
This was followed by more AI related topics, including:
- Harnessing Generative AI in the Cloud – AWS: Leo Zhadanovsky, Chief Technologist for Education, AWS, and
- Balancing Innovation with Ethics: Victoria Nxumalo, Founder & Executive Director, Girls in STEM Trust.
One of the highlights of the morning was the expert panel discussing the impact on students of the latest technological disruptions and innovations: “How Big is the Disruption to the Learner Landscape?
The afternoon sessions broke into Corporate Learning and Formal Education streams.
The corporate stream had a number of super sessions, including two reflective sessions on AI – “AI: How to Avoid Spending Money on Tech that Does Not Work”: Nick Shackleton-Jones, Founder, Shackleton Consulting, and “(Re)Imagining the Future of Learning with AI”: Ilse White, Corporate Learning Researcher, Learnovate and Frank O’Reilly, Corporate Learning & Development, Learnovate.
The Formal Education theme had some great discussions, included the ongoing debate of “Teaching Versus Tech – The Great Debate” which covered among other points – Are the emerging technologies going to change the way we teach, and learn, forever?
And it's a wrap.
As the day ended with networking, more refreshments, drinks, and live entertainment, we relaxed and engaged in some lively conversations about the reach, relevance, and application of accessibility concepts in educational settings!
We had some great interest in both our Accessibility training and advisory services on alternative formats for content and multimedia, as well as solid feedback on our Toolkit.
Thank you to Learnovate and their fantastic organising staff, to all the sponsors, the presenters, the hosts, and most of all, everyone who attended and contributed, for giving us another great learning experience with fantastic take-aways and thoughts for improvements.
Looking forward to next year already, and wondering what will be the new core topic? More AI innovation, or will the discussion have moved on to where AI is just embedded in everything?
If you didn’t manage to make it to the event itself, the recordings are available on the Learnovate Centre Youtube Channel. The Summit 2023 highlights video is included above!
