Conference win underlines Wellington’s learning opportunities

Te Pūkenga and Massey University Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa have won their joint bid to host the International Council for Open and Distance Education’s (ICDE) 30^th World Conference in Wellington in 2025. The win was announced at this year’s ICDE World Conference in Costa Rica. Dr Mark Nichols, event co-chair representing Te Pūkenga and ICDE Board member, says that hosting the event will highlight Te Pūkenga and Massey University’s efforts to promote higher education: “Many of the open universities represented across the ICDE global membership have student numbers greater than the entire New Zealand tertiary sector. “Internationally, the trend is toward increasingly available, time-independent solutions to learning where providers ensure they remove or reduce barriers to place, pace, and access. The small, distributed population of Aotearoa makes open and distance learning a key feature of our ako (learning and teaching) provision.” On the joint bid, professor Giselle Byrnes, event co-chair representing Massey University, adds: “For Te Pūkenga, partnering with Massey University brings vocational and academic higher education into focus. For Massey University, the opportunity to work with Te Pūkenga offers enhanced opportunities for learning and sharing best practices across the wider tertiary education system. She adds: “Hosting a conference focused on removing barriers to education also directly supports the city’s Economic Wellbeing Strategy which identifies lifelong learning and online learning as important components in the development of Wellington’s future labour market.”  The biennial event will take place at Tākina Wellington Convention & Exhibition Centre in November 2025 and is expected to attract more than 800 international leaders in the education field to New Zealand’s capital. 2023 sees ICDE celebrate its 85^th anniversary, having organised international conferences on OFDL since 1938.