WLS
World Learning Summit 2025
Kristiansand, Norway, October 30-31 and Dec 11 2025
TEACHING, LEARNING AND MAKING SENSE IN THE AI AGE
TRANSFORMATIONS • INTERACTIONS • GENERATIONS • MEDIATIONS
INVITATION
JOIN US FOR OUR 15TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
When information is everywhere, then where is knowledge?
And how do we as learners make sense in times when ´fake´ has become normal?
Our learning ecosystem is now global. “Making sense of things” locally in the context of global challenge, is a timely call for attention work in the interest of defending and cultivating the future of open, transparent learning society.
For WLS 2025 we invite projects, panel suggestions and presentations relating to these issues. The event happens over three different dates: October 30th, October 31st, and December 11th. The two first days are focused on students, in an emergent context of AI-driven technology convergence. The third day is oriented to new learning designs and academic experience exchange. It will unfold over four hours as a globally accessible ZOOM event.
Details below.
Featured lecture Oct. 30
Tor Wennesland
Tor Wennesland is a former Norwegian diplomat, now associated with the Oslo Peace Research Institute (PRIO). He was ambassador to Egypt and Libya, 2011.2015. From 2025 through 2025 he was the UN Special Coordinator for the peace process in the Middle East. Wennesland has also served as Secretary General for the Norwegian Europe Association. For a period he was the spec al adviser to the Norwegian Minister of Planning Terje Rød Larsen. In 2007 - 2008 Wennesland was also special adviser to Tony Blair in Blairs capacity as Middle East negotiator.
Featured lecture Oct. 31
KRISTOFFER HOLT
Kristoffer Holt is Pofessor of Media and Communication at the Department of Media and Journalism (MJ), Linnaeus university, Kalmar, Sweden. His field of research includes alternative media, media and religion, media ethics, media criticism as well as political communication and participatory and citizen media. His work has appeared in journals such as Digital Journalism, European Journal of Communication, Journal of Mass Media Ethics and New Media & Society among others. Holt is engaged in studies of mis- and dis-information, working closely with the Swedish Forum for Journalism (FOJO).
SUMMIT DETAILS
DECEMBER 11th •
ONLINE SUMMIT DIALOG • 12 PM - 4 PM UTC
(World Clock - check here)
1 PM - 5 PM - Norway Time
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1PM: OPENING
Donna Kidwell & Oddgeir Tveiten
Future Learning Visions in the age of AI – The Challenge of Institutional Transformation
Panel dialog
Kristoffer Holt (Linnaeus University Sweden);
June Breivik (Norwegian Education Association);
Alex le Voci Sayad (Zeitgeist, Brasil)
1:45 PM
Stephen Dobson
Student wellness in the AI Age
Vidar Mortensen
The Wounded Learner
2:15 PM
Cathy Casserly
2:45 PM
Mirko Schaefer
3:15PM
Anjum Malik
October 31st
Mannskapsmessa, Odderøya
Following the explorations with MA students on October 30th, we continue October 31st with exploring a similar issue with BA students. The full day workshop opens with a 30-minute overview of contemporary world conflicts and crises today, followed by a keynote lecture on the challenge of misinformation, disinformation and general erosion of trust in news media as social institutions. This provides the backdrop for the remainder of the day.
This workshop is in English, and it includes BA students from a dozen different countries, about 65 all told. These students of political communication will be engaged not in exploring Artificial Intelligence, as on October 030th with MA students: they will be challenged to explore misinformation, disinformation, fake news and global information flows through making videos of their own. Using a well-tried platform for collaborative video production where we keep a number of licenses, students are trained in the basic aspects of shooting and editing video. This happens the week before we meet for this workshop.
Divided into groups, the challenge during the workshop is this:
• Begin by developing a group discussion on the theme of where group members get their news and information from on a daily basis. Make a list: from friends, from news media (which ones) or from social media (which ones)? Discuss these news and information habits in light of the themes in the opening morning talks. Think about where you are: looking out the window you have the view to a quite multicultural city, ripe with stories about how different ethnic/cultural communities understand and relate to world conflicts going on. Or take a five-minute walk outside, ´you will find remnants of canon stands, from the second world war, pointing out towards the horizon. How can our understanding of previous conflicts and wars help us to better understand the wars and conflicts of today?
• Next, each group will chose one theme of their own from which to generate a story that they want to tell the others. What theme? How do we want to tell it? To whom? Why?
• Third, after making use of their smartphones and microphones (provided) each group comes back in to upload their footage and sound, editing together a video that is maximum 1 minute long (1 minute is actually not that short – and it forces us to create very clear messages).
The workshop will unfold with students, observers and facilitators interacting to explore how this quite practical and hands-on approach to learning offers a different pathway than your classic auditorium and seminar room learning designs. On the last leg of the day we show and critique our videos.
FIND PROGRAM DETAILS HERE
Arkivet Peace Center / Arkivet Freds og Menneskerettgighetssenter
Ocotober 30th / 30. oktober
This workshop is in Norwegian.
How do students make use of Artificial intelligence, as learners at college or university, and in everyday life? What is it that course designers and study program developers as well as lecturers need to pay special attention to? While AI is not a new technology, it made huge advances with the introduction of ChatGPT and similar platforms around 2021-2022. After that, development has accelerated, with impacts and consequences that are difficult to comprehend and with future equally difficult to predict.
On October 30th, WLS will place students in focus rather than present research articles and projects that are available in other forms. Students, educators and researchers alike are invited to attend a workshop where about 20 MA students will engage in groupwork to explore impacts potentials of AI in student life, generally. Clearly, AI converges with other communications media to create a powerful change factor that alters the borderlines between everyday media consumption and approaches to being a student. And these phenomena are what we seek to explore together.
The day opens with a lecture by former UN Middel East envoy and Norwegian Ambassador Tor Wennesland, who will give a talk on his experiences during those times. Wennesland will also reflect on how news media frame and narrate complex stories.
Students coming from development studies, planning studies and communication studies will then be challenged on two fronts:
• How does the morning lecture and its themes resonate with their studies, readings and coursework? Clearly, global development as a study field has more than coincidental links to the challenge of understanding the Middle East conflict lines, if not to say the rebuilding of Gaza. The same goes for planning studies: If there ever was a case where Planning meets Development, then this is surely high on that list. And when it comes to social communication, the media and information systems: The Middle-East conflict is ripe with relevant considerations.
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• After that workshop part where students develop their understanding though a set of exercises embedded in active use of AI, we turn in the second part to critical reflections on what the use of AI in studies and everyday life might imply: One thing is how we make use of AI. Another aspect is what consequences it has, over time, individually and collectively.
At the workshop, there will be time for other non-student attendees (fx. educators, observers, facilitators) to engage with the students, suggest and learn. The main point with this design is to provide a space for problem-based learning, situated learning, design thinking – all of them variants of a learning pathway through practical relevance explorations.
FIND PROGRAM DETAILS HERE
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