Openness and innovation are major trends in contemporary education, influencing the whole spectrum of education institutions across the globe. Technological advancement and breakthroughs are bringing about a paradigm shift in contemporary education. Modes of learning and teaching are becoming more open and innovative in terms of time, space, curriculum contents, organization, pedagogical methods, infrastructure, and requirements. These changes take place virtually in all institutions (offering conventional, online, and/or open courses). With this background, Hong Kong Metropolitan University (HKMU) organizes annual conferences on open and innovative education with the following aims:

a. provide a platform for sharing quality research, effective practices, and well-formulated views relevant to open and innovative education;

b. facilitate networking and cross-institutional collaboration among researchers and educators in fields of educational innovation and/or openness; and

c. promote studies and advancements in open and innovative education.

Building on the successes of the conference series in eleven previous years, the 2026 International Conference on Open and Innovative Education (ICOIE 2026) will be held at the campus of Hong Kong Metropolitan University in Hong Kong. The conference will take place as a hybrid conference on 23–24 July 2026. All participants may choose to attend the conference and present their papers at the conference venue in Hong Kong or through our video conferencing system.

Submission Guidelines
Papers submitted for presentation should normally be in correct English. The oral presentation must be done in easily comprehensible and fluent English. Papers must be presented by the authors themselves. No one will be allowed to present any paper on behalf of its author.

Papers may also be written in Chinese and presented in Putonghua. In such a case, an English version of the abstract should be submitted together with the Chinese version.

Quality is the most important requirement. All papers to be presented should have concrete contributions to fields relevant to open and/or innovative education. All submissions will be reviewed for relevance, originality, clarity, soundness, and significance by at least two reviewers.

Each abstract accepted for oral presentation will be allocated a timeslot for paper presentation if at least one of the authors completes the registration. (Each paper presentation requires at least one registration at the early-bird or regular rate.)

For abstract submission, please follow the abstract guidelines.For full paper submission*, please follow the guidelines for full papers.

*For inclusion in the electronic proceedings.

List of Topics
1. Agile/blended/agile-blended learning
2. Artificial intelligence in education
3. Big data/academic analytics
4. Technology-enhanced student engagement
5. Engaging students and learning design
6. Technology-driven innovations in curriculum and pedagogy
7. Knowledge and competence assessment
8. Open education/OERs/MOOCs
9. Social media and technology-mediated learning communities
10. Technology-enabled student advising
11. VR/AR/MR in education

Venue
Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong SAR, China

Contact
Email: icoie2026@hkmu.edu.hk