Research
The Center for Open Sustainable Learning (COSL)
At the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning (COSL), we believe that all humans beings are endowed with a capacity to learn, improve, and progress. Educational opportunity is the mechanism by which we fulfill that capacity. Therefore, free and open access to educational opportunity is a basic human right. When educational materials can be electronically copied and transferred around the world at almost no cost, we have a greater ethical obligation than ever before to increase the reach of opportunity. When people can connect with others nearby or in distant lands at almost no cost to ask questions, give answers, and exchange ideas, the moral imperative to meaningfully enable these opportunities weighs profoundly. We cannot in good conscience allow this poverty of educational opportunity to continue when educational provisions are so plentiful, and when their duplication and distribution costs so little.
The Center for Research on Engaging Advanced Technology for Education (CREATE)
The Center for Research on Engaging Advanced Technology for Education (CREATE) consists of a team of researchers in instructional technology, artificial intelligence, engineering, and graphic design. The CREATE team investigates ways to enhance the efficacy of advanced technology for K–12 learners. In particular, CREATE utilizes anthropomorphized interfaces (called pedagogical agents) to provide social context for learning and to increase young learners’ motivation to learn in computer-based environments.
Creative Learning Environments (CLE)
At Creative Learning Environments (CLE) we investigate the influence of text-based and 3D games on motivation and learning. We are seeking to understand how new, mobile technologies effect writing practices. Students compose texts using multiple modes of communication and to identify how and why such texts are rhetorically situated.
Digital Libraries Connect (DLConnect)
The Digital Libraries go to School and DLConnect projects are collaborations focusing on NSDL dissemination within school settings through professional development workshops and tool development.
Through a design-based program of workshop development and deployment, the projects are expected to directly impact elementary, middle, and high schools in Utah, New York, and Michigan. The program is also expected to have impact through a well-developed scheme for dissemination and sustainability with teachers and schools nationwide.
Instructional Architect (IA)
The Instructional Architect (IA) allows you to find, use, and share learning resources from the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) and the Web in order to create engaging and interactive educational web pages. It's easy and free.
The Interdisciplinary Media Research Consortium (IMRC - pronounced "immerse")
The Interdisciplinary Media Research Consortium (IMRC - pronounced "immerse") houses a digital laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art hardware and software and staffed with experienced faculty and students from three departments and two colleges at Utah State University. Research and development of professional quality, immersive educational games and simulations are the main focus.