Professional development and international networking for the Junior Researcher
The 13th JURE 2009 pre-conference, that took place on 24 and 25 August 2009, was a vibrant conference where everybody had the opportunity to present their ‘out-of-the-box' ideas. The JURE pre-conference grew tremendously in size compared to the JURE pre-conferences of 2005 and 2007: from 36 presentations in 2005, to 96 in 2007 and to 139 in 2009. These 139 presentations included 54 paper presentations, 48 poster presentations and 37 round table discussions. The committee also organised 9 different workshops, on various topics: Multilevel analysis, Video-observation in research on teaching, Journal Reviewer Workshop, CSCL: Investigating Online Learning Conversations, Peer Assessment for Publication: Process and Product, Educational Design Research: Stacking up evidence for educational interventions, Online teacher training in higher education: from research to development of ICT competences, Protocol analysis and Organising a conference. The Best-of-JURE-award went to the paper by Jake McMullen (University of Turku), titled ‘Justifying the Margins: Identifying the effects of data collection and categorisation methods on sociometric measurements in the classroom'. 247 Participants registered for the conference, from all over Europe, and even from Australia, the United States, South Africa and Israel. Looking back, we can proudly say that JURE 2009 was a success, which also showed in the evaluation by the participants.
A lot of junior researchers participated in activities of the social ‘shadow programme', and got to know each other in a more personal and informal way. The shadow programme started even before the official opening of the JURE 2009 pre-conference, and continued partly parallel to the EARLI 2009 conference. Unofficially, the conference started on the 23rd of August. At 2pm, the committee organised a cycling tour for participants who arrived early, showing them all the ‘hot spots', highlights and ‘must-sees' in downtown Amsterdam. Participants were able to ‘pre-register' themselves on Sunday night, in a hip bar called ‘Canvas' in the centre of Amsterdam. Other activities of the shadow programme were volleyball and running. And... What is a JURE conference without the main social event: the JURE dinner. The dinner, that took place in the grand café "The Basket", located at the conference venue, was attended by about 100 junior researchers.