September 17-19,
Maastricht, The Netherlands
http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/~sergut/isee08/

IMPORTANT DATES:
Submission deadline: June 15, 2008 (extended)
Abstract deadline: see below ('Latest news')
Notification of acceptance: July 8, 2008
Camera-ready version: Aug 8, 2008
Workshop: One day between September 17-19, 2008, Learning Cafe Methodology

LATEST NEWS
Due to several requests, we have decided to extend the deadline for contributions to the workshop by one week. Authors should submit their contributions by Jun 15th. Please note we cannot extend this any further, as the dates are already very tight.
Authors are kindly asked to send the abstract (plain text is OK) of their contribution as soon as possible, so the organising committee is able to pre-assign referees and accelerate the reviewing process in order to cope with the notification deadline.

OBJECTIVES
There is an increasing trend of research in exploratory learning environments (ELE), as opposed to traditional systems with a clear delimitation of the domain and well-defined sequences of tasks to be performed. ELE support a constructionist approach to learning encouraging the learner to create their own solutions to problems. This has been found to be particularly beneficial in terms of providing opportunities for acquiring deep conceptual and structural knowledge.
However, there are several factors that prevent appropriate learning within an exploratory learning environment, not least the 'play paradox', which recognises the pedagogical power of playful, exploratory learning, yet acknowledges that students may potentially learn concepts that were not predicted by the designers. A key finding is that a crucial determinant of learning is the level of support of the learning process by teachers, peers, technologies and the structure of the activity sequences. There is a need for a certain level of support of the learning process. This is particularly true in the case of mathematics where, unlike physics or other science domains, knowledge is rarely a directly observable outcome of a simulation under exploration and therefore other more expressive tools are required to permit students to externalise their ideas.
There are two aspects of this support that are relevant: intelligent support and support for collaboration. Both of them provide important challenges which are described at the workshop web page at http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/~sergut/isee08/. The workshop web page also enumerates the research questions that will be the focus of the workshop.

TOPICS OF INTEREST
- Design of exploratory learning environments
- User modelling in exploratory environments
- Collaborative tools for open environments
- Collaborative learning in open environments
- Adaptive feedback for exploratory tasks
- Modelling based on open-ended tasks
- Fuzzy and probabilistic techniques for modelling
- Educational data mining
- Development of generalisation thinking
- Sequencing of activities in open learning enviroments
- Application of learning standards in exploratory learning enviroments
- Support for teachers in blended learning scenarios with exploratory learning environments
- Authoring of open-ended tasks with intelligent support

WORKSHOP FORMAT
The workshop will be question-oriented, aiming at lively discussion sessions rather than a mini-conference format.
In particular, the methodology used will be based on an adaptation of the 'learning discussion forum' (aka Learning Cafe Methodology) which involves experts' introductions and group discussions ensuring that all participants can have a direct impact in addressing the workshop questions. This methodology has been successfully implemented in previous conferences (e.g. 'Towards User Modelling and Adaptive Systems for All' at UM'07 or 'Making of the Future of Technology Enhanced Professional Learning' at ECTEL'06).
More details of this methodology are given at the workshop web page (http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/~sergut/isee08/).

SUBMISSION
Authors should send papers that clearly address one or more of the questions to be explored at the workshop (see http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/~sergut/isee08/). Papers should be 6-10 pages long.
All submissions will be refereed by the Programme Committee in order to decide on acceptance.
Accepted papers will be used as a basis for the discusions on the day of the workshop.
The submissions should be in the format of Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). Please check: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html for instructions on how to prepare submissions. Send your submissions to sergut@lkl.ac.uk and m.mavrikis@ioe.ac.uk, with subject "ISEE'08 submission".
The workshop proceedings will be published online as part of the CEUR Workshop proceedings series. http://CEUR-WS.org is a recognized ISSN publication series, ISSN 1613-0073.
The two best papers will be selected for publication in a special issue of the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL - http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalCODE=ijtel).

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
* Ryan Baker (Carneggie Mellon, USA)
* Jesús García Boticario (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)
* Andrea Bunt (University of Waterloo, Canada)
* Celia Hoyles (Institute of Education, UK)
* Ken Kahn (University of Oxford, UK)
* Piet Kommers (University of Twente, The Netherlands)
* Chronis Kynigos (University of Athens, Greece)
* George Magoulas (Birkbeck College, UK)
* Richard Noss (Institute of Education, UK)
* Kyparissia Papanikolau (University of Athens, Greece)
* Abelardo Pardo (University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain)
* Alexandra Poulovassilis (Birkbeck College, UK)
* Cristóbal Romero (University of Cordoba, Spain)
* Olga Santos (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)
* Niall Winters (Institute of Education, UK)