Knowledge sharing at conferences

To improve the quality in teaching and learning, opportunities need to be provided where practitioners and researchers meet and share visions, disseminate findings, co-construct ideas, and set research agendas together. Visiting a conference is one well-known and established way to do this. But are they effective? A survey was conducted among the attendants of 15 practice-oriented and research-oriented conferences (N = 490) with monocultural and mixed audiences held in The Netherlands in 2005. The findings suggest that, although conferences provide formal and informal opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogues, intradisciplinary meetings are prominent. Most encounters are aimed at the dissemination of information. To a lesser extent, people exchange materials, co-create knowledge, and set research agendas. The conferences sustain traditional role divisions in which researchers present and practitioners consume. To improve the interactivity between researchers and practitioners at conferences, new web-based interaction formats are discussed.