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Call for Papers:

OpenACS and .LRN Spring Conference, Vienna 2007 - International Conference and Workshops on Community Based Environments

http://oacs-dotlrn-conf2007.wu-wien.ac.at/ April 25 - 28, University of Economics and Business Administration Vienna, Austria

1 Introduction

The OpenACS and .LRN Spring Conference for 2007 is the 5th of a series which focuses on the development of community based web sites and on community based e-learning environments. The confernence is the user and developer conference of the Open-Source Frameworks OpenACS and DotLRN. Presentations and Submissions are not limited to these frameworks.

The conference offers multiple activities for users and developers of the framework as well as for people interested in the mentioned topics in general. The program will contain tutorials and BOFs, two days of presentations and workshops and the traditional bug bashing day. While part of the presentations will be use-cases and research developments, the workshops will focus on short-presentation of approaches, discussions and some outcomes in form of a consolidated opinion, state-of the art report or a proposal, which will be presented in a common session.

2 Topics

* Agile Content Development * Web 2.0 for E-Learning Environments and/or DotLRN, OpenACS * Testing-Environment and Testing Approaches * Methodologies for online teaching * Learning design (IMS LD, LAMS) * Specialized Learning Components * Social Software * Educational standards support * Usability for online learning * Accessible services for learners * Experiences and Best Practices * Remoting Frameworks for OpenACS * Extending Object Orientation in OpenACS for better reuse and configuration * Architectural Developments

3 Participation and Important Dates 3.1 Participation

The conference and workshops addresses practitioners, developers and researchers in the topics mentioned above. Participants intending to present their work should send a 2 page abstract to conference@dotlrn.org. Every presentation at the conference will take about 20 minutes, followed by 10 minutes discussions. The presentations are reviewed by the program committee. The presentations and papers will be published electronically on the conference web site.

In addition to the presentation style conference program, we plan Thematic Workshops to foster discussions on the workshop topics. These workshops do not overlap with other workshops or presentations. Ideally, every workshop will contain 3 or 4 short position presentations (max 5 slides) that should fuel the discussion in the workshop. The outcome of each workshop should be a document summarizing the results, which might range from a consolidated set of opinions to a road map paper inspiring the development of the framework.

In the pre-confernce program, we plan Tutorials and "Birds Of a Feather" (flocking together) sessions, which are informal group discussions where participants wish to discuss certain developments or problems.

We would like to encourage people interested to participate to fill out the pre-registration form on http://oacs-dotlrn-conf2007.wu-wien.ac.at/ . Participants intending to present a short position statement should note their intensions and topic in the pre-registration form (including BoF topics).

3.2 Important Dates

* April 2th, 2007: Submissions of Abstracts (2 pages, mail to conference@dotlrn.org) * April 9th, 2007: Notification and Final Program * April 25th, 2007: Pre-Conference Program: Tutorials and BOFs * April 26th and April 27th: Main Confernce * April 28th, 2007: Developers Day

3.3 Program Committee

* Carl Blesius, MGH Lab of Computer Science, U.S.A. * Alfred Essa, Deputy CIO at Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, U.S.A. * Gustaf Neumann, University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna, Austria. * Carlos Delgado Kloos, UC3M, Spain. * Jesús G. Boticario, UNED, Spain. * Emmanuelle Raffenne, UNED, Spain. * Olga C. Santos, aDeNu Research Group, UNED, Spain. * Rocael Hernández, Galileo University, Guatemala.

3.3 Organization Committee

* Valerie Bajc (WUW) * Bernd Simon (WUW) * Stefan Sobernig (WUW)

For more details, please visit the conference website at http://oacs-dotlrn-conf2007.wu-wien.ac.at/