Learning Engineering is the systematic application of evidence-based principles and methods from educational technology and the learning sciences to create engaging and effective learning experiences, support the difficulties and challenges of learners as they learn, and come to better understand learners and learning. It emphasizes the use of a human-centered design approach in conjunction with analyses of rich data sets to iteratively develop and improve those designs to address specific learning needs, opportunities, and problems, often with the help of technology. Working with subject-matter and other experts, the Learning Engineer deftly combines knowledge, tools, and techniques from a variety of technical, pedagogical, empirical, and design-based disciplines to create effective and engaging learning experiences and environments and to evaluate the resulting outcomes. While doing so, the Learning Engineer strives to generate processes and theories that afford generalization of best practices, along with new tools and infrastructures that empower others to create their own learning designs based on those best practices.
Supporting learners as they learn is complex, and design of learning experiences and support for learners usually requires interdisciplinary teams.
Learning engineers themselves might specialize in designing learning experiences that unfold over time, engage the population of learners, and support their learning; automated data collection and analysis; design of learning technologies; design of learning platforms; improve environments or conditions that support learning; or some combination. The products of learning engineering teams include on-line courses (e.g., a particular MOOC), software platforms for offering online courses, learning technologies (e.g., ranging from physical manipulatives to electronically-enhanced physical manipulatives to technologies for simulation or modeling to technologies for allowing immersion), after-school programs, community learning experiences, formal curricula, and more. Learning engineering teams require expertise associated with the content that learners will learn, the targeted learners themselves, the venues in which learning is expected to happen, educational practice, software engineering, and sometimes even more.
Learning engineering teams employ an iterative design process for supporting and improving learning. Initial designs are informed by findings from the learning sciences. Refinements are informed by analysis of data collected as designs are carried out in the world. Methods from learning analytics, design-based research, and rapid large-scale experimentation are used to evaluate designs, inform refinements, and keep track of iterations. [1] [2] [3] According to the IEEE Standards Association's IC Industry Consortium on Learning Engineering, "Learning Engineering is a process and practice that applies the learning sciences using human-centered engineering design methodologies and data-informed decision making to support learners and their development." [4]
Herbert Simon, a cognitive psychologist and economist, first coined the term learning engineering in 1967. [5] However, associations between the two terms learning and engineering began emerging earlier, in the 1940s [6] and as early as the 1920s. [6] [7] Simon argued that the social sciences, including the field of education, should be approached with the same kind of mathematical principles as other fields like physics and engineering. [8]
Simon’s ideas about learning engineering continued to reverberate at Carnegie Mellon University, but the term did not catch on until businessman Bror Saxberg began marketing it in 2014 after visiting Carnegie Mellon University and the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center, or LearnLab for short. Bror Saxberg brought his team from the for-profit education company, Kaplan, to visit CMU. The team went back to Kaplan with what we now call learning engineering to enhance, optimize, test, and sell their educational products. Bror Saxberg would later co-write with Frederick Hess, founder of the American Enterprise Institute's Conservative Education Reform Network, the 2014 book using the term learning engineering.
In 2017, the IEEE Standards Association form the IC Industry Consortium on Learning Engineering as a part of its Industry Connections [ dead link ] program.
Between 2017 and 2019, ICICLE formed eight Special Interest Groups (SIGs) as a collaborative resource to support the growth of Learning Engineering. The Curriculum, and Credentials SIG chaired by Kenneth Koedinger pioneered the work on a formal definition of learning engineering. Later work by the Design SIG led by Aaron Kessler led to the development of a learning engineering process model. In 2024 ICICLE changed its name to International Consortium for Innovation and Collaboration in Learning Engineering and became part of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee.
Learning Engineering is aimed at addressing a deficit in the application of science and engineering methodologies to education and training. Its advocates emphasize the need to connect computing technology and generated data with the overall goal of optimizing learning environments. [9]
Learning Engineering initiatives aim to improve educational outcomes by leveraging computing to dramatically increase the applications and effectiveness of learning science as a discipline. Digital learning platforms have generated large amounts of data which can reveal immediately actionable insights. [10]
The Learning Engineering field has the further potential to communicate educational insights automatically available to educators. For example, learning engineering techniques have been applied to the issue of drop-out or high failure rates. Traditionally, educators and administrators have to wait until students actually withdraw from school or nearly fail their courses to accurately predict when the drop out will occur. Learning engineers are now able to use data on off-task behavior [11] or wheel spinning [12] to better understand student engagement and predict whether individual students are likely to fail.
This data enables educators to spot struggling students weeks or months prior to being in danger of dropping out. Proponents of Learning Engineering posit that data analytics will contribute to higher success rates and lower drop-out rates. [13]
Learning Engineering can also assist students by providing automatic and individualized feedback.
Carnegie Learning’s tool LiveLab, for instance, employs big data to create a learning experience for each student user by, in part, identifying the causes of student mistakes. Research insights gleaned from LiveLab analyses allow teachers to see student progress in real-time.
A/B testing compares two versions of a given program and allows researchers to determine which approach is most effective. In the context of Learning Engineering, platforms like TeacherASSIST [14] and Coursera use A/B testing to determine which type of feedback is the most effective for learning outcomes. [15]
Neil Heffernan’s work with TeacherASSIST includes hint messages from teachers that guide students toward correct answers. Heffernan’s lab runs A/B tests between teachers to determine which type of hints result in the best learning for future questions. [16] [17]
UpGrade is an open-source platform for conducting A/B testing and large-sclae field experiments in education. [18] It allows EdTech companies to run experiments within their own software. ETRIALS leverages ASSISTments and give scientists freedom to run experiments in authentic learning environments. Terracotta is a research platform that supports teachers' and researchers' abilities to easily run experiments in live classes.
Educational Data Mining involves analyzing data from student use of educational software to understand how software can improve learning for all students. Researchers in the field, such as Ryan Baker at the University of Pennsylvania, have developed models of student learning, engagement, and affect to relate them to learning outcomes. [19]
Education tech platforms link educators and students with resources to improve learning outcomes.
Datasets provide the raw material that researchers use to formulate educational insights. For example, Carnegie Mellon University hosts a large volume of learning interaction data in LearnLab's DataShop. [20] Their datasets range from sources like Intelligent Writing Tutors [21] to Chinese tone studies [22] to data from Carnegie Learning’s MATHia platform.
Kaggle, a hub for programmers and open source data, regularly hosts machine learning competitions. In 2019, PBS partnered with Kaggle to create the 2019 Data Science Bowl. [23] The DataScience Bowl sought machine learning insights from researchers and developers, specifically into how digital media can better facilitate early-childhood STEM learning outcomes.
Datasets, like those hosted by Kaggle PBS and Carnegie Learning, allow researchers to gather information and derive conclusions about student outcomes. These insights help predict student performance in courses and exams. [24]
Combining education theory with data analytics has contributed to the development of tools that differentiate between when a student is wheel spinning (i.e., not mastering a skill within a set timeframe) and when they are persisting productively. [25] Tools like ASSISTments [26] alert teachers when students consistently fail to answer a given problem, which keeps students from tackling insurmountable obstacles, [27] promotes effective feedback [27] and educator intervention, and increases student engagement.
Studies have found that Learning Engineering may help students and educators to plan their studies before courses begin. For example, UC Berkeley Professor Zach Pardos uses Learning Engineering to help reduce stress for community college students matriculating into four-year institutions. [28] Their predictive model analyzes course descriptions and offers recommendations regarding transfer credits and courses that would align with previous directions of study. [29]
Similarly, researchers Kelli Bird and Benjamin Castlemen’s work focuses on creating an algorithm to provide automatic, personalized guidance for transfer students. [30] The algorithm is a response to the finding that while 80 percent of community college students intend to transfer to a four-year institution, only roughly 30 percent actually do so. [31] Such research could lead to a higher pass/fail rate [32] and help educators know when to intervene to prevent student failure or drop out. [33] [34]
Researchers and educational technology commentators have published critiques of learning engineering. [6] [35] The criticisms raised include that learning engineering misrepresents the field of learning sciences and that despite stating it is based on cognitive science, it actually resembles a return to behaviorism. Others have also commented that learning engineering exists as a form of surveillance capitalism. Other fields, such as instructional systems design, have criticized that learning engineering rebrands the work of their own field.
Still others have commented critically on learning engineering's use of metaphors and figurative language. Often a term or metaphor carries a different meaning for professionals or academics from different domains. At times a term that is used positively in one domain carries a strong negative perception in another domain. [36]
The multidisciplinary nature of learning engineering creates challenges. The problems that learning engineering attempts to solve often require expertise in diverse fields such as software engineering, instructional design, domain knowledge, pedagogy/andragogy, psychometrics, learning sciences, data science, and systems engineering. In some cases, an individual Learning Engineer with expertise in multiple disciplines might be sufficient. However, learning engineering problems often exceed any one person’s ability to solve.
A 2021 convening of thirty learning engineers produced recommendations that key challenges and opportunities for the future of the field involve enhancing R&D infrastructure, supporting domain-based education research, developing components for reuse across learning systems, enhancing human-computer systems, better engineering implementation in schools, improving advising, optimizing for the long-term instead of short-term, supporting 21st-century skills, improved support for learner engagement, and designing algorithms for equity. [37]
Instructional design (ID), also known as instructional systems design and originally known as instructional systems development (ISD), is the practice of systematically designing, developing and delivering instructional materials and experiences, both digital and physical, in a consistent and reliable fashion toward an efficient, effective, appealing, engaging and inspiring acquisition of knowledge. The process consists broadly of determining the state and needs of the learner, defining the end goal of instruction, and creating some "intervention" to assist in the transition. The outcome of this instruction may be directly observable and scientifically measured or completely hidden and assumed. There are many instructional design models, but many are based on the ADDIE model with the five phases: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.
A teaching method is a set of principles and methods used by teachers to enable student learning. These strategies are determined partly by the subject matter to be taught, partly by the relative expertise of the learners, and partly by constraints caused by the learning environment. For a particular teaching method to be appropriate and efficient it has to take into account the learner, the nature of the subject matter, and the type of learning it is supposed to bring about.
Instructional scaffolding is the support given to a student by an instructor throughout the learning process. This support is specifically tailored to each student; this instructional approach allows students to experience student-centered learning, which tends to facilitate more efficient learning than teacher-centered learning. This learning process promotes a deeper level of learning than many other common teaching strategies.
Active learning is "a method of learning in which students are actively or experientially involved in the learning process and where there are different levels of active learning, depending on student involvement." Bonwell & Eison (1991) states that "students participate [in active learning] when they are doing something besides passively listening." According to Hanson and Moser (2003) using active teaching techniques in the classroom can create better academic outcomes for students. Scheyvens, Griffin, Jocoy, Liu, & Bradford (2008) further noted that "by utilizing learning strategies that can include small-group work, role-play and simulations, data collection and analysis, active learning is purported to increase student interest and motivation and to build students ‘critical thinking, problem-solving and social skills". In a report from the Association for the Study of Higher Education, authors discuss a variety of methodologies for promoting active learning. They cite literature that indicates students must do more than just listen in order to learn. They must read, write, discuss, and be engaged in solving problems. This process relates to the three learning domains referred to as knowledge, skills and attitudes (KSA). This taxonomy of learning behaviors can be thought of as "the goals of the learning process." In particular, students must engage in such higher-order thinking tasks as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
M-learning, or mobile learning, is a form of distance education or technology enhanced active learning where learners use portable devices such as mobile phones to learn anywhere and anytime. The portability that mobile devices provide allows for learning anywhere, hence the term "mobile" in "mobile learning." M-learning devices include computers, MP3 players, mobile phones, and tablets. M-learning can be an important part of informal learning.
A learning management system (LMS) or virtual learning environment (VLE) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, automation, and delivery of educational courses, training programs, materials or learning and development programs. The learning management system concept emerged directly from e-Learning. Learning management systems make up the largest segment of the learning system market. The first introduction of the LMS was in the late 1990s. LMSs have been adopted by almost all higher education institutions in the English-speaking world. Learning management systems have faced a massive growth in usage due to the emphasis on remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Educational technology is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, "EdTech", it often refers to the industry of companies that create educational technology. In EdTech Inc.: Selling, Automating and Globalizing Higher Education in the Digital Age, Tanner Mirrlees and Shahid Alvi (2019) argue "EdTech is no exception to industry ownership and market rules" and "define the EdTech industries as all the privately owned companies currently involved in the financing, production and distribution of commercial hardware, software, cultural goods, services and platforms for the educational market with the goal of turning a profit. Many of these companies are US-based and rapidly expanding into educational markets across North America, and increasingly growing all over the world."
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework based on research in the learning theory, including cognitive neuroscience, that guides the development of flexible learning environments and learning spaces that can accommodate individual learning differences.
An intelligent tutoring system (ITS) is a computer system that imitates human tutors and aims to provide immediate and customized instruction or feedback to learners, usually without requiring intervention from a human teacher. ITSs have the common goal of enabling learning in a meaningful and effective manner by using a variety of computing technologies. There are many examples of ITSs being used in both formal education and professional settings in which they have demonstrated their capabilities and limitations. There is a close relationship between intelligent tutoring, cognitive learning theories and design; and there is ongoing research to improve the effectiveness of ITS. An ITS typically aims to replicate the demonstrated benefits of one-to-one, personalized tutoring, in contexts where students would otherwise have access to one-to-many instruction from a single teacher, or no teacher at all. ITSs are often designed with the goal of providing access to high quality education to each and every student.
Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is a pedagogical approach wherein learning takes place via social interaction using a computer or through the Internet. This kind of learning is characterized by the sharing and construction of knowledge among participants using technology as their primary means of communication or as a common resource. CSCL can be implemented in online and classroom learning environments and can take place synchronously or asynchronously.
Open education is an educational movement founded on openness, with connections to other educational movements such as critical pedagogy, and with an educational stance which favours widening participation and inclusiveness in society. Open education broadens access to the learning and training traditionally offered through formal education systems and is typically offered through online and distance education. The qualifier "open" refers to the elimination of barriers that can preclude both opportunities and recognition for participation in institution-based learning. One aspect of openness or "opening up" education is the development and adoption of open educational resources in support of open educational practices.
Augmented learning is an on-demand learning technique where the environment adapts to the learner. By providing remediation on-demand, learners can gain greater understanding of a topic while stimulating discovery and learning. Technologies incorporating rich media and interaction have demonstrated the educational potential that scholars, teachers and students are embracing. Instead of focusing on memorization, the learner experiences an adaptive learning experience based upon the current context. The augmented content can be dynamically tailored to the learner's natural environment by displaying text, images, video or even playing audio. This additional information is commonly shown in a pop-up window for computer-based environments.
Evidence-based education (EBE) is the principle that education practices should be based on the best available scientific evidence, with randomised trials as the gold standard of evidence, rather than tradition, personal judgement, or other influences. Evidence-based education is related to evidence-based teaching, evidence-based learning, and school effectiveness research.
Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs. The growth of online learning since the 1990s, particularly in higher education, has contributed to the advancement of Learning Analytics as student data can be captured and made available for analysis. When learners use an LMS, social media, or similar online tools, their clicks, navigation patterns, time on task, social networks, information flow, and concept development through discussions can be tracked. The rapid development of massive open online courses (MOOCs) offers additional data for researchers to evaluate teaching and learning in online environments.
D2L is a Canada-based global software company with offices in Australia, Brazil, Europe, India, Singapore, and the United States.
Educational data mining (EDM) is a research field concerned with the application of data mining, machine learning and statistics to information generated from educational settings. At a high level, the field seeks to develop and improve methods for exploring this data, which often has multiple levels of meaningful hierarchy, in order to discover new insights about how people learn in the context of such settings. In doing so, EDM has contributed to theories of learning investigated by researchers in educational psychology and the learning sciences. The field is closely tied to that of learning analytics, and the two have been compared and contrasted.
OER Commons is a freely accessible online library that allows teachers and others to search and discover open educational resources (OER) and other freely available instructional materials.
Kahoot! is a Norwegian online game-based learning platform, similar to Quizlet, Gimkit, and Blooket. It has learning games, also known as "kahoots", which are user-generated multiple-choice quizzes that can be accessed via a web browser or the Kahoot! app.
Bruce Martin McLaren is an American researcher, scientist and author. He is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, head of the McLearn Lab, and a former President of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society (2017-2019).
Okhee Lee is an American education scholar and professor of childhood education.
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(help)Mark Lieberman. "Learning Engineers Inch Toward the Spotlight". Inside Higher Education. September 26, 2018.
International Consortium for Innovation and Collaboration in Learning Engineering