The TEL programme seeks to distil themes from across the projects into more generalisable findings. In doing so, we are helping to answer the question: how can technology be designed and built so that it improves learning?
Built into the initial commissioning of the TEL programme were four key research themes namely Flexibility, Inclusion, Personalisation and Productivity. To these have been added another key theme Research Community.
- Research Community: helping the UK research community to rise to the interdisciplinary challenges of TEL research.
- Flexibility: enabling the provision of education and skills to be deployed in more open, variable, and accessible ways, so that learning opportunities are available in a more seamless environment that can link classroom, home, workplace, and community.
- Inclusion: improving the reach of education and lifelong learning to groups and individuals who are not best served by mainstream methods.
- Personalisation: transforming the quality of learning, teaching and assessment by exploiting the responsive and adaptive capabilities of advanced digital technologies to achieve a better match with learners’ needs, dispositions and identities.
- Productivity: achieving higher quality and more effective learning in affordable and acceptable ways.
Under each theme there are a number of different strands led by experts in particular fields that seek to analyse the programme’s work as a whole from different perspectives and look outwards to achieving impact in their field. There are currently 10 strands in different stages of evolution, as follows:
- Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) led by Rose Luckin under the Personalisation theme.
- Digital Inclusion led by Jane Seale under the Inclusion theme
- Digital Literacies led by Fred Garnett and Helen Beetham under the Flexibility theme. Research briefing and workshop 2009 led by Julia Gillen and David Barton.
- Early Career Researchers led by Patrick Carmichael and Helen Burchmore under the Capacity building theme
- Ethics in TEL led by Vic Lally and Mike Sharples under the Capacity building theme
- Productivity led by Diana Laurillard under the Productivity theme
- Interdisciplinarity led by Gráinne Connole and Eileen Scanlon under the Capacity building theme
- Specialist Advisory Group for Echoes (SAGE) led by Karen Guldberg under the Inclusion theme
- Technology Enhanced Research led by Richard Cox under the Capacity building theme
- User Modelling led by Kaska Porayska-Pomsta under the Personalisation theme
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