Sessions

Virtual Presentations at ELT Conferences

There are many reasons that travel to conferences by presenters may be unwanted or impossible. Such reasons include, but are not limited to, physical disability, lack of financing, political restrictions, and eco-sustainability concerns. Nonetheless, presenting at conferences is often key to academic and professional networking, disseminating one's research and ideas, and career progression. Thus, there arises for　some a tension between the inability or lack of desire to travel to present and the perception of the need to present at conferences. Virtual presentations, in which the presenting party is physically remote from the audience, could dissolve, or at least ameliorate, this tension. The study presented here investigates the presentation format policies of more than 200 conferences in the field of English Language Teaching and adjacent fields. The percentage of conferences that permit virtual conferences is reported, and for those conferences that do permit virtual presentations, it is reported whether the format is synchronous, asynchronous, or mixed. This data then informs a discussion about the ethics of travel for conferences in terms of inclusivity/accessibility and sustainability. Some potential benefits of virtual presentations for conferences that do not currently permit them are also discussed.