Languages in the Wild: Technology and Learning Beyond Walls

May 18-22, 2027

University of Alaska, Fairbanks

Fairbanks, AK

We invite proposals for CALICO 2027 that engage with this year’s theme, “Languages in the Wild: Technology and Learning Beyond Walls,” and explore how language learning with technology happens across classrooms, communities, digital spaces, and the wider world. This year’s theme encourages presenters to consider how CALL can support authentic, situated, mobile, immersive, and community-based language learning.

Possible thematic topics to be presented, discussed, and contemplated this year include, but are not limited to:

• Language Across Places and Spaces: Connecting Place-Based Teaching, Technology, and Experiential Learning

Exploring how digital technologies can connect language learning to lived experience,  such as community immersion and study abroad, expanding opportunities for meaningful interaction, collaboration, and engagement with local and remote communities and places.

• Uncharted Territory, Trusted Compass: Exploring New Paths in CALL

Exploring and embracing uncertainty, productive risk, and new research, practice, and technologies, guided by expertise and collective wisdom in language teaching and learning.

• Ancestral Voices: Indigenous and Community Languages in the Digital Age

Technology as a tool for language preservation, revitalization, and documentation, centering community-led approaches in Alaska and beyond.

• Open Terrain: Access, Equity, and the Digital Landscape

Bridging barriers to language learning and to technology.

• The Northern Lights: A Nexus of Industry and Academia

Innovative research that brings academia and industry together.

Across these subthemes, we welcome proposals that examine mobile-assisted learning, AI, XR, gaming, geolocation, learner analytics, digital literacies, open educational resources, community-based research, multilingual learning ecologies, teacher development, assessment, corpus tools, online and hybrid learning, and other areas of CALL theory, research, and practice.

We welcome proposals from researchers, teachers, graduate students, instructional designers, program administrators, developers, and community and industry partners working across languages, contexts, and educational settings. CALICO 2027 especially encourages submissions that connect theory and practice, foreground diverse and community-based perspectives, and critically examine how technology can help language learning travel beyond walls into the wider world.

Types of proposals

The CALICO conference features five types of presentations. Unless otherwise noted, all presentations should be delivered in English.

• Hands-on workshop (half day, full day or two day)

Workshops, as the name implies, take place in labs and consist of teaching some hands-on skill to attendees, such as a web/mobile/other application for languages, lesson development using technology for a classroom, or introducing a piece of software to users.

• Presentation (30 mins)

Individual presentations take place during the two full days of the main conference. These presentations are theory-driven and address quantitative/qualitative studies of language technology, application of technology for classroom use, or any of a range of language technology uses/applications for language acquisition. In order for proposals to be evaluated appropriately, submitters are asked to classify their presentation as:

– Empirical Research (e.g., data-based experimental work) or
– Classroom Report (e.g., practice-based reports).

• Panel (75 mins)

Panel presentations involve various presenters offering multiple views of a specific topic. The longer time allows for more in-depth coverage than in an individual session.

• Technology Showcase presentation

Technology Showcase presentations take place the first or second night of the main conference in a more informal setting — all presenters in a large room presenting simultaneously (no projection) while attendees may approach to discuss topics individually.  Demonstration-based presentations work well as Showcase presentations.

• Poster presentation

Poster presentations are scheduled during the Opening or during the Showcase time and follow the same format: simultaneous presentations, with attendees approaching to discuss topics individually.

Format of the Submission Form

These are the pieces of the form you’ll be asked to fill in and submit.

Type of Presentation (See types above)
Online Only (If you’d like to present online instead of in-person, we are planning at this time that they will be synchronous online as in 2026.)
Workshop Length (Only if applicable)
Title (Do not forget to put in a title, even it’s temporary as this will be the only way to see and edit your proposal again once it’s submitted.)
Abstract (100 words)
Description (300 words)
Topic (Broad topics in which it might fall)
Tech requests

Submitting Your Proposal

You will need to have an account for the CALICO website and be logged in before submitting your proposal. Register with the site. The submission deadline is October 30, 2026.  If you run into any problems, please contact Esther Horn, info@calico.org, and explain the situation. 

See you in Fairbanks!