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ESD Innovate and Kappa Delta Pi hosted the Biennial Meeting of the (INTEI) from 13 to 15 November 2018 in the innovative format of an online conference. INTEI is a Key Partner of the (ESD) and associated with the UNESCO Chair on Reorienting Teacher Education to Address Sustainability at York University in Toronto, Canada. Joining the activities online were 72 participants spanning 21 time zones.

“I always learn from participating in these conferences. Building my capacity is of significance for me and helping other to build theirs is also important to me.”

The interactive online conference format was possible due to recent advances in real-time conferencing platforms, learning management systems, video archives, file transfer services, and free teaching tools. The conference featured plenary sessions for the professional development of the participants, as well as working sessions in which participants engaged in problem-solving together and shared their experiences, successes and challenges. The conference participants made one-minute videos on Flipgrid to introduce themselves to each other, allowing them to meet and greet each other and recognize each other’s names, faces and voices during live discussions.

Working sessions that included voices from both the Global North and Global South were organized according to clusters of time zones in the Asia-Pacific; South and Central Asia; Europe-Africa; and the Americas and the Caribbean. Keynote speakers were video recorded at KDP Convo in early November 2018, allowing viewing at different times, followed by live discussions by time zones. The value of informal conversation that typically occurs in tea breaks was captured in wikis in which participants made posts related to specific topics.

“The keynote and expert videos gave me a lot to think about which I will introduce in my institution and programmes.”

An online conference provided a host of benefits:

• It gave INTEI members the opportunity to practice sustainability while advocating for and teaching about sustainability and ESD.
• The ecological footprint of the conference was remarkably small given that participants registered from 38 countries and there were no printed materials.
• The meeting was more socially and economically inclusive of teacher educators who typically cannot attend international face-to-face meeting because of work-related conflicts, limited economic resources or junior status.
• By offering an online conference, ESD Innovate created a pool of teaching resources with voices from the Global South and the Global North that are archived for use in teacher-education programmes.
• The cost to participants was none; all apps were downloaded at no cost.
• The overall budget for the conference was zero dollars with in-kind contributions from KDP and from TEIs for the use of existing subscriptions to online conferencing platforms.

“I thank you all for your great organization and facilitation. This is a unique experience in my perspective ... worth repeating in the future. I encourage holding future conferences online to really practice sustainability ourselves.”

A theme that arose several times in the online conference live discussions, was that participants want more – not one-off – online professional development for teacher educators. They requested innovative, not traditional, online professional development – and this conference was an example of how to deliver it.