Preface

The EC-TEL Doctoral Consortium is part of the EC-TEL since its beginning in 2005. The Doctoral
Consortium is part of the doctoral program of the European Association of Technology Enhanced
Learning (EATEL). Besides the Doctoral Consortium this program comprises the JTEL Summer School
for doctoral candidates. Together, these two events have been shaping and enriching the experiences of
many young researchers in their PhD journey and building a community that focuses on and solves the
transdisciplinary challenges of our field.

This volume contains papers presented at Doctoral Consortium of the Sixteenth European Conference
on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2021) held on September 20–21, 2021 in Bolzano, Italy,
as a fully online event. There were 20 applications, of which 15 resulted in full paper submissions. Each
of the 15 papers have been reviewed by three doctoral consortium committee members. All 15
submissions were found eligible for presentation at the doctoral consortium. The papers in this volume
completed the full reflection cycle that is characteristic for the EC-TEL Doctoral Consortium.

The EC-TEL Doctoral Consortium is designed as a training event for PhD candidates that seeks to
improve the quality of their research. This starts with expressing the own research project and with
identifying the limitations and challenges of the present stage. These initial submissions were reviewed
by the program committee of senior members of the community. In order to strengthen the learning
experience, every doctoral candidate who participated in the event had to review one other submission
and raise questions. Together the reviews provide the foundation for the presentations at the Doctoral
Consortium, which were then discussed and challenged by the board of experts. Besides paper
presentation, the doctoral consortium included a keynote, a social interaction session, mentoring
session, and short workshops. After the Doctoral Consortium all participants had the opportunity to
present their work as a poster at the main conference, which creates a unique opportunity to engage into
discussions with the wider research community. All papers included into these proceedings have been
reworked to address the comments of the reviewers and the participants of the event.

The submissions to this year's doctoral consortium show the continued relevance for PhD candidates to
get qualitative feedback on their projects beyond the level of research papers. Receiving submissions
from seven countries across Europe, the EC-TEL Doctoral Consortium shows its international
relevance. The variety of topics with both technological and educational focus represented at the
doctoral consortium once again highlight the highly multidisciplinary nature of the TEL field. This is
complemented by EATEL's activities for building the doctoral community including the series of
webinars organized by the DETEL EU project.

31 December 2021
Mikhail Fominykh