The skills and knowledge required to take an active part in a society characterised by digital technology are embedded, learned, and practiced in people’s daily lives.

The ever-changing media and technology landscapes create opportunities for learning at all stages in life in formal and informal settings. Society itself can be understood as a learning environment. New policies and practices entailed by the high presence of digital tools have to take into account the "inclusion" or "exclusion" of different groups in society.

Technology and open education open doors to groups of learners from a range of backgrounds, generations, and cultures with different languages, literacies, and ways of communication.

How do educators deal with diversity in media and technology-enhanced learning environments? How can such diversity be accounted for and used to transform and adapt online learning settings? How do educators, stakeholders, and policy makers meet digital inequalities? What are the new challenges for teachers and educators in the new media landscapes to create meaningful contexts for learning?

The behaviour, interests, and roles of learners are also repositioned. Technological innovation implies faster learning, and instruction has to be “useful” in order to motivate and engage students. In order to strengthen and stabilise learning, the collaboration between the human mind and the machine has to be regularly reconsidered. Digital technology supports sustainable environments in which learners gain new perspectives on their learning, share and learn collectively, and master their own drive for learning.

It is of great importance to study how the educational framing, from policy level down to the actual learning situation, allows for various types of eLearning, as well as open and distance education. One challenge is the often fragmented view of what has been achieved theoretically and practically in this field and the ever-increasing offer of technology. How do we bring together the strengths of the past with the opportunities for the future? Co-ordination of information, knowledge, and creativity is of major importance for the educational experience.

EDEN 2017 is the forum that offers a chance to work together for these goals and to gain further insight into the core questions.