About the CRLT

The Center for Research on Learning and Technology at the School of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington is an organization dedicated to helping people find the appropriate application of technology to improve teaching and learning in diverse settings. People around the globe are exploring new educational collaborations, brought to them through new technologies. The CRLT was formed to put people in touch with the technology that is helping to change education and to shape the tools that will make those changes more productive.

What is meant by "technology"? Here by technology we simply mean "innovations that support learning and teaching." Thus, the Quest Atlantis project, which has designed and researched an online multiplayer video-game, fits well into the CRLT because it involves engaging cutting-edge technology in order to improve learning. At the same time, the New Tech High project, which sought to understand the implication of someone else's design (a form of project-based learning), also fit well within the CRLT because the purpose of the project was to investigate the impact of that design on teaching and learning.

What do we mean by "improving teaching and learning"? Our center seeks to better understand the conditions that support student and teacher learning. This can be measured in divers ways -- from traditional standardized assessments to close ethnographic studies of changes in patterns of participation. Thus there is no "one way" that learning and instruction needs to be studied, assessed, or analyzed. Indeed, the more diverse perspectives, the more potential for conversations.

What do we mean by "diverse settings"? We are particularly committed to understanding issues of equity, and how particular innovations impact students and teachers differently. Thus, studies which specifically target diverse populations, or which strive to better understand histories of failure or disaffiliation from schools, are especially relevant

What counts as "research"? In the CRLT, our goal is not simply to design innovation, but to leverage designed interventions to advance our knowledge about how, and why such designs work to improve teaching and learning. Thus, projects need to include a rigorous model of research. By rigor, we mean intentionally collecting data that will yield insight into the mechanisms and outcomes of designs. A variety of methods can accomplish these goals: naturalistic observation, design experiments, and large-scale comparisons are all example of methods that would enable a researcher to better understand the contribution of a particular design to teaching and learning.