SCIENCE SAYS: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is on a mission to understand how people learn and improve it for students of all ages. It announced an initiative to consolidate and expand the Institute’s programs in online and digital education. The Integrated Learning Initiative, called MITili (pronounced “mightily”), will combine research in fields from cognitive psychology to economics to investigate what educational approaches work for people studying different subjects.
“By applying a strong research basis to existing campus efforts in scaling educational access, we can continually improve those learning experiences,” Professor Eric Klopfer, director of the MIT Scheller Teacher Education Program, said in a press release. The findings from MITili will be applied to improve MIT’s teaching efforts in pK-12, higher education and professional continuing education.
One component of MITili, the MITx Digital Learning Lab, will play a central role in applying the research on campus and online. Postdocs, instructors and lecturers comprise the Lab, which will work with faculty to guide them on digital learning strategies to make teaching more effective.
