Through EC-TEL, established and emerging researchers as well as practitioners, entrepreneurs, and technology developers explore new collaborations, strengthen networks, and complement their core expertise. EC-TEL 2014 is collocated with the fourteenth International Conference on Knowledge Technologies and Data-driven Business (i-KNOW 2014).

Educational arrangements in modern society are increasingly characterized by openness in terms of participation, institutionalisation, and of tools, devices, and resources used. We see shifts among formal, non-formal, and informal learning. Learners come together in different social settings and communities (such as in groups in schools, teams in a company, or in informal communities of learners). They share and co-create educational resources and interact with an ever-increasing number of open educational resources.

Learning communities differ in dimension from local ones, through distributed groups up to global communities (as witnessed by the emerging MOOCs paradigm). The learners use multiple computational tools and devices, often at the same time (e.g. tablets and smartphones for individual learning, interactive tables and electronic whiteboards for collaboration, and mobile technologies for taking learning outside the classroom). Access to the open educational arrangements takes place in a mobile ubiquitous fashion.