Forum to Envision the Future of Learning Technology
Thistle Hotel
Brighton, England July 4-5, 2009

This forum explores major opportunities for future learning technology research. The goal is to identify the next big computing ideas in education, to achieve open access of global educational resources, and to reuse, repurpose, and share such resources. We will develop a research agenda for various funding agents and produce two documents: one that articulates a broad vision, and the other articulates specific research areas, issues and promising directions to reach that vision. These documents are directed at funding agencies and, hopefully, will be turned into funding mechanisms for future research. The forum is part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation entitled Global Resources For Online Education (GROE) to involve leaders in a worldwide discussion.

We will address our challenge with several working groups whose themes will be shaped by the people participating. These topics and themes may change. Currently we see the core issues as:

Wireless, Pervasive and Ubiquitous Learning. Accessing digitized artifacts anytime, anywhere; effectively invisible computing from many computers; augmenting physical space; aggregating across all students; technical, physical and security considerations.

Assessing and Enhancing Learning. Improving human capabilities; building cognitive partnerships; develop instructional databases and digital libraries; educational data mining.

Social Learning. Distributed cognition, learning communities, networking, collaboration, mobile and ubiquitous computing to create seamless social learning.

Intelligent Virtual Environments. Customized instruction; user-models;  intelligent tutors; gaming environments; adaptive hypermedia.

Rich Computer Interfaces. Intelligent agents; multimedia; learning companions; teachable agents; detecting and responding to student emotion.

This forum will be held BEFORE the AIED Conference and AFTER the UMAP Conference at the Thistle Hotel Brighton, England on July 4-5, 2009.

Enrollment is limited so please check for availability. To join this Forum, send a recent vita to Burt Woolf. (bwoolf@acad.umass.edu) and indicate Brighton Future of Learning Technology in the subject line. A small registration fee will be charged.