In the core research program of CEL 4 research lines will be defined and regularly revised and evaluated on a yearly basis in meetings with the supervisory board. These research lines will fulfil two functions a) to cluster research and innovation activities to bring people together that look into similar lines of reasoning for creating better higher education and b) to create visibility and excellence on these core topics for CEL in the relevant scientific communities and universities world-wide.
• Learning Analytics and AIED: a new generation of AI-based systems is entering the educational playing field. Most of these systems are data-based and use machine learning to enhance learning support. Learning Analytics is one of the fastest growing EdTech communities in the last years. How can we use student and tracking data for supporting humans in more efficient reflection and monitoring of their learning progress and develop their learn-to-learn skills? How can intelligent agents and dialogue systems help humans and guide and regulate their learning. How can personalisation be implemented in student interaction with intelligent agents either via protégé scenarios or in guidance on learning strategies?
• Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality: The new opportunities and motivational power of serious games and gamification is often referred to in the literature. Systematic research should bring together empirical evidence and support for concrete design and gamification patterns for different purposes in educational settings. Furthermore, the combination of gaming approaches with immersive media for collaborative learning should enable deeper learning experiences and the possibilities to experience complex learning problems with AR/VR and simulations.
• Educating Digital Literate Students: Digital data and models change the way science and education is done or even shape new scientific disciplines. This research line addresses questions around how digital skills like computational thinking or digital information search and structuring are important to all disciplines in higher education and how they can be taught efficiently and embedded in different curricula. Searching information on the internet and using digital information in learning is an essential component in nearly every learning project. Digitally literate students need to know how to retrieve, store, elaborate, and evaluate digital information and its sources.
• Embracing the Mobile Student Generation on the Seamless Blended (IoT) Campus: More and more information and learning support is given and accessed via mobile devices. Mobile devices are powerful instruments to help students monitoring and reflecting on learning progress, collecting and consuming learning content and authentic data, as also for communication and making use of social networks. In relation to formative and summative assessment also enables the automatic logging and monitoring of assessment related performance indicators or learning related data.