The mission of the European Association for Distance Learning (EADL) is to represent all privately-owned and non-governmental European organisations offering high quality and educationally sound distance learning. EADL aims to improve the quality and acceptance of distance learning to ensure the maximum benefit for students. EADL provides its members with a forum for open discussion of all issues related to distance learning and for sharing ideas and good practice.

One keynote speaker of the conference will be Steve Wheeler. He is a global educator, teaching online, and on a number of undergraduate and post-graduate teacher education programmes in the UK and overseas. In recent years education has been assailed by waves of new technologies, theories and practises. Some have penetrated deeply into education while others are still peripheral. In this presentation Steve will explore the use of MOOCs, AI, social media, smart mobiles, virtual worlds, augmented and virtual reality, as well as some of the emerging associated theories, to evaluate their effectiveness on pedagogy. Steve will also speculate on the future of distance education and how it might be shaped by the next wave of technology.

Antoher keynote speaker will be Jef Staes. He  is an authority on learning processes and innovative organizations and has 25 years of professional experience as Training Manager and Corporate Learning Officer. The world is changing faster and faster. From a flat 2D-World to a chaotic and ever-changing 3D-World. Organizations, companies, schools and regions have to adapt to a 3D-World that is flooded with information and need to increase their Learning Power dramatically. Today’s companies however are not able to create the right learning and working environment that enables and energizes passion and talent based learning and working. We unintentionally transformed talented students and adults into passionless sheep. This keynote is a plea for a dramatic change in the organization of work and education. After this session 2D, 3D, 3D-Smarting, the Competence Playlist, the Power Defect and Jeff’s Law will be branded in your brain. You will become disrupted.