Educational Technology & Society
Call for paper s for a Special Issue on Educational Design Resear ch for Human Beings ’ Lear ning Access – Center ing Accessibility, Equity, and Inclusion

Guest Editors:

Xun Ge, Ph.D.

University of Oklahoma, USA

J uhong Chr istie Liu, Ph.D.

James Madison University, USA

Zhe Li, Ph.D.

Osaka University , Japan

The Journal of Educational Technology & Society (J-ET&S), a top ranked journal on Google Scholar, is calling for papers for a special issue focusing on the theme, “Educational Design Research for Human Beings Learning Access – Centering Accessibility, Equity, and Inclusion”. The guest editors are Dr. Xun Ge, Dr. Juhong Christie Liu, and Dr. Zhe Li. More details are announced on the J-ET&S website: https://www.j-ets.net/
・ET&S - Call for papers for a Special Issue on Educational Design Research for Human Beings’ Learning Access
・https://www.j-ets.net/announce#h.zfs2thr95q7

1. Special issue focus, scope, and r ationale

https://www.j-ets.net/announce#h.zfs2thr95q7

In an era when digital and immersive technologies surrounding human beings, inclusion, equity, and accessibility become a rising focus to serve and center human in education (Estes et al., 2020; Sulecio de Alvarez & Dickson- Deane, 2018). These can be expressed in ubiquitous technologies, such as captions in media (Downey, 2007) and with mobile devices to access MOOCs (Park et al., 2019). These can also be emerging technologies or special domain research, such as educational design research for participants with special needs or identity using technology in education. With the development of technologies and their evolving affordances, it is becoming crucially important to design and develop these products for life and learning with the needs of all human beings in mind, regardless of race, gender, age, identity expressions, ethnicity identity, socioeconomic status, and abilities.

This special issue invites papers on educational design research with focus on emerging technologies serving learners with special needs and diverse backgrounds of gender, race, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, identity expression, ability, and capability. Educational design research is defined as “the iterative development of solutions to practical and complex educational problems, and also provides the context for empirical investigation ” (McKenney & Reeves, 2019, p. 6). With the iterative nature, educational design research papers in this special issue are anticipated to provide human-centered study and solution with an inclusive lens of novice types of research methods, research process, user or learner experience design, human-product and human-context interactions, product testing and evaluation, and their societal impacts.

This special issue solicits educational design research papers on emerging technologies, with foci on learning access, serving learners with special needs, enhancing their learning progress, and assessing learning with different tools and formats and in different contexts, centering inclusion. The design research can be at different development stages, ranging from needs and context analysis, learner/user experience, prototype design and development, to implementation and evaluation stage. However, empirical data or evidence at various testing stages (e.g., pilot testing, learner/user experience surveys, formative evaluation, summative evaluation) are strongly encouraged to be included to support the research. The goal of this special issue is to promote the educational research and development of special technologies and create equity and accessibility driven technology-facilitated educational environments.

We are calling for educational design research papers that focus on supporting learning access for learners with diverse abilities (e.g., visual, hearing, kinesthetic, cognitive, et al), diverse background (e.g., BIPOC-black, indigenous, and people of color, religion, ethnicity), and equity access. Technologies can include but not be limited to one or more than one of the following topics:

• virtual reality, augmented reality, or mixed realit
• artificial intelligence
• speech recognition
• facial recognition
• big data
• smart learning environments
• devices enabling equity of access to learning (e.g., cognitive risk measures)
• hardware, such as ergonomic mouse/touchpad, assistive access to mobile devices, home/community learning environment accommodating diverse age groups

The design research focusing on the development of accessibility technologies can be framed for a broader audience, including learners, but the research must be tied with the educational or training context and provide implications for learners with diverse needs and backgrounds, addressing accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. The special issue also encourages the use of newer methods of research design and data collection as long as the methods and analysis are aligned with the defined stage(s) of educational design research goals and objectives and demonstrate pragmatic evidence and scholarly significance.

2. Timeline of special issue

Manuscript Submission Due Date:			May 20, 2023
1st round Review Notification:			July 20, 2023
1st round Revision Submission Due Date:		September 20, 2023
2nd round Review Notification:			November 20, 2023
2nd round Revision Submission Due Date:		December 20, 2023
Final Acceptance Notification:			March 20, 2024
Final Camera-ready Manuscript Due Date:		May 20, 2024
Editorial Preface Submission:			June 20, 2024
Estimated Publication Date:			October 2024, Volume 27, Issue 4
	

*Please note that ET&S provides early-access to the recent published articles, and the accepted articles in this SI may appear earlier than this, as early-access.

3. Paper submission

All submissions to this Special Issue should be submitted using the submission system available on the journal ’s website www.j- ets.net, under “Special Issue: Educational Design Research for Human Beings ’ Learning Access – Centering Accessibility, Equity, and Inclusion ” to differentiate it from a regular paper submission.

All submissions of the Special Issue should comply to the Author Guidelines of Educational Technology & Society (ET&S), available on https://www.j-ets.net/author_guide. All submissions should fit within the scope of ET&S as described in the Aims and Scope of ET&S. Please see the full Aims and Scope of ET&S: https://www.j- ets.net/journal_info/scope

4. Special issue expectations

This Special Issue also follows the following ET&S guidelines:

• Special Issue papers should be original, unpublished, and should not be in consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission and during the review proces
• Manuscripts that are rejected in the regular submissions by the Editor-in-Chief should not be considered unless the manuscript had undergone an overall revision of the manuscript or a change in research directio
• Manuscripts are with less than 8,000 words, inclusive of a 250-word abstract, 4 to 5 keywords, figure captions, tables (in table format, not as images), excluding References and Appendices. Placeholder, Endnotes and footnotes are not accepte
• All Special Issues are subject to the standard double-blind review process, and initial submissions should not contain any author- identifying information (includes using only “author ” and year of publication for any citations and references involving any of the authors
• Author Guidelines are available at https://www.j-ets.net/author_guide

** Please note that papers collected and analyzed only self-reported data that obtained from interview or questionnaire survey without a meaningful educational treatment are NOT within the scopes of ET&S or the current Special Issue.

All manuscripts must be submitted to Educational Technology & Society by uploading the anonymous manuscript and title page through our online management system with ET&S Submission Manuscript Template , following the journal authors guide at https://www.j-ets.net/author_guide.

In addition, this special issue requires that the manuscript contains the following sections, focusing on educational design research:

• Introduction, including but not limited to
  • problem or needs statement
  • context and population of this educational design research
  • purpose and goals of this educational design research
  • related reasoning to conduct this research
  • envisioned meaning or impact
• Literature review, including but not limited to
  • discipline-specific learning needs
  • previous educational technology research related to the specified population
  • theoretical or conceptual framework(s)
  • any literature related to the selected research methods
• Research design, methods, and data collection, including but not limited to
  • research questions articulated
  • rich description of the research context, participants, and research process and procedures
  • justification of methods and instruments (if any) selected for the research
• Data analysis and results, including but not limited to
  • analysis methods described, justified and aligned with research questions
  • results supported by valid evidence, in other words, clear linkage between data and results
  • results answering or linking to the research questions
• Conclusion and discussion, including but not limited to
  • research responding to the needs or problems identified in the introduction
  • implications of this design research for educational practice?
  • contribution of the research to the existing literature
  • insights or theory generated from this research
  • limitations or constraints of the study
  • directions for future research

The manuscript formatting, references, presentation of tables and figures should follow the author guide of the Journal of Educational Technology & Society: https://www.j-ets.net/author_guide.

References

Downey, G. (2007). Constructing closed ‐captioning in the public interest: From minority media accessibility to mainstream educational technology. Info, 9 (2/3), 69-82. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636690710734670
Estes, M. D., Beverly, C. L., & Castillo, M. (2020). Designing for accessibility: The Intersection of instructional design and disability. In M. J. Bishop, E. Boling, J. Elen, & V. Svihla (Eds.), Handbook of Research in Educational Communications and Technology. Springer , Cha m. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36119-8_8
Lowenthal, P. R., Humphrey, M., Conley, Q., Dunlap, J. C., Greear, K., Lowenthal, A., & Giacumo, L. A. (2020). Creating accessible and inclusive online learning: Moving beyond compliance and broadening the discussion. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 21 (2), 1-82.
McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. (2019). Conducting educational design research (2nd ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315105642
Park, K., So, H. J., & Cha, H. (2019). Digital equity and accessible MOOCs: Accessibility evaluations of mobile MOOCs for learners with visual impairments. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 35 (6), 48-63.
Sulecio de Alvarez, M., & Dickson-Deane, C. (2018). Avoiding educational technology pitfalls for inclusion and equity. TechTrends, 62 (4), 345-353.