Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL) Special Issue Call: Celebrating 25 Years of the ILTA EdTech Conference EdTech You: Digital Learning From How to Who
Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning (IJTEL)
Special Issue Call: Celebrating 25 Years of the ILTA EdTech Conference
EdTech You: Digital Learning From How to Who
Introduction
Since the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) first convened its annual EdTech conference in IT Sligo, (now the Atlantic Technological University) in 2000, we have collectively lived through the rise of the VLE, mobile learning, the MOOC moment, a pivot to emergency remote teaching, and now the generative AI era. Through each of these shifts, the ILTA EdTech conference has remained a connection point for practitioners, researchers, and thinkers who care deeply about what technology means for teaching, learning, and the humans at the heart of both.
This special issue of the Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning marks a special milestone. It takes its title and its guiding question directly from the 2026 conference theme: EdTech You: Digital Learning From How to Who. Rather than asking only what technologies can do, we ask who gets to design, develop, and deploy them, for whom, and why. Who has been present in EdTech conversations over the past 25 years, and who has been missing? What does the history of this community reveal about our assumptions, our blind spots, and our aspirations?
We invite submissions that are grounded in the 2026 EdTech conference and in the longer arc of 25 years of Irish learning technology scholarship and practice.
Scope and Focus
Submissions to this special issue should engage with one or more of the following threads, drawn from the EdTech 2026 conference theme:
Who was, is, and should be part of the EdTech community: including questions of equity, access, diversity, and inclusion in the design and deployment of educational technology.
Retrospective and historical perspectives: what has changed, what has persisted, and what the past 25 years of EdTech practice and scholarship can teach us about where we are heading.
Participatory and relational approaches to EdTech: including Students as Partners, co-design, and relational ethics frameworks.
Critical and imaginative perspectives on educational technology: work that challenges dominant narratives and opens space for more just and joyful possibilities.
Submission Types
This special issue welcomes four categories of submission. Authors are strongly encouraged to ground their contributions in work presented or encountered at EdTech 2026, though this is not a strict requirement.
- Original Research (3,000 words max, including abstract and references)
We welcome original research papers reporting primary research in technology enhanced learning, following a structured format that includes introduction, literature review, methodology, results, and discussion. Authors presenting at EdTech 2026 are particularly encouraged to develop their conference abstracts into full research submissions for this issue.
- Position Papers (3,000 words max, including abstract and references)
Position papers offer a platform for scholarly voices that challenge assumptions and spark crucial conversations about technology in education. For this special issue, we are especially interested in position papers that engage with the EdTech 26 theme, exploring questions of equity, ethics, identity, participation, or the politics of who EdTech has historically centred and who it has not. Contributions may be provocative and should be grounded in evidence and make an original contribution to debate.
- Short Reports (2,500 words max, including abstract and references)
For this special issue, we have a particular invitation within this category. We warmly encourage presenters from the past 25 years of the ILTA EdTech conference to contribute a short reflective report that revisits their past work. What did you present, and when? What has changed in your thinking, your practice, or the field since then? What does looking back reveal about the trajectory of technology enhanced learning in Ireland and beyond? These contributions are an opportunity to honour the living history of this community, and to turn the scholarly gaze on our own evolution as a field. Short reports may take novel or creative formats and are valued as much for their storytelling as for their scholarly rigour.
- Book and Multimedia Reviews (1,000 words max, including abstract and references)
We strongly encourage EdTech 2026 attendees to use the conference as a springboard for this category. If a keynote, workshop, or conversation introduced you to a book, a tool, a platform, a podcast, or any other resource that deserves a closer look, this is your invitation to dig deeper and share that encounter with the broader IJTEL readership. Reviews should move beyond simple evaluation to explore how the resource contributes to our collective understanding and practice of technology enhanced learning, weaving together description, analysis, and reflection.
Submission Guidelines
All submissions should adhere to the standard IJTEL author guidelines.
Timeline
Due to the timeliness of the EdTech26 anniversary, we are proposing an ambitious submission, review and publication schedule for the issue:
Deadline for submissions: October 2, 2026
Deadline for reviews: November 6, 2026
Authors notified: November 16, 2026
Deadline for revisions: December 18, 2026
Special issue publication date: February 5, 2027
Peer Review
All accepted manuscripts will be subject to the standard IJTEL double-blind peer review process.
Guest Editors
Kate Molloy
PhD student | School of STEM Education, Innovation and Global Studies - Dublin City University
Chair | Computers in Education Society of Ireland (CESI)
Dr Rob Lowney SCMALT SFHEA SFSEDA
Teicneolaí Foghlama Sinsearach, Aonad um Fheabhsú Teagasic (AFT)
Senior Learning Technologist, Teaching Enhancement Unit (TEU)
Dublin City University
Questions?
email: journal@ilta.ie
