Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning (RETTL)

Overview

<p>The goal of the Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning program is to support transformative research on advanced technologies for teaching and learning to educate a new generation of students, teachers, educators, and mentors to excel in highly technological and collaborative environments of the future. The scope of the program is wide-ranging, with special interest in diverse learner/educator populations, contexts, and content, including teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and in foundational areas that enable STEM (e.g., self-regulation, literacy, communication, collaboration, creativity, and socio-emotional skills). The program accepts proposals that focus on learning, teaching or a combination of both. The program invites proposals that integrate knowledge about how people teach and learn (individually and in groups) with the opportunities offered by emerging technologies. These technologies support learning environments that are, for example, adaptive, interactive, immersive, virtual, embodied, and augmented.</p> <p>Emerging and innovative technologies have the potential to reshape teaching and learning processes, which in turn can influence new technology designs. Research responsive to this opportunity should be informed by the convergence of multiple disciplines: such as learning sciences; discipline-based education research; computer and information science and engineering; design; and cognitive, behavioral and social sciences. These interdisciplinary areas of research could include (for example, and not limited to) affective computing, human-centered AI, social/educational robotics, intelligent conversational agents/assistants, and virtual/embodied agents.</p> <p>This program solicits projects that are exploratory and experimental in nature. The program serves as an incubator to support frontier research in advanced learning and teaching technologies. Projects should be theory-driven and apply human-centered design methods to explore proof-of-concept or feasibility of innovative learning technologies in the support of new learning and/or teaching experiences. We encourage projects that explore new ideas, especially those where outcomes may be uncertain and involve risk.</p> <p><strong>This program funds a broad range of projects across:</strong></p> <p><strong>Content area:</strong> to include STEM and other foundational areas supported by NSF that enable STEM learning and teaching (e.g., self-regulation, literacy, communication, collaboration, creativity, curiosity, and social skills). <br><strong>Population and context:</strong> to include learners, teachers, mentors, educators and other workers in formal or informal settings; and individual, collective, and collaborative learning and teaching across the lifespan.</p> <p>All projects must have clear research objectives that integrate teaching and/or learning and technology innovations to advance the respective fields (e.g., learning sciences, discipline-based education research, computer and information sciences, engineering, and/or social, cognitive and behavioral sciences) as described below:</p> <p><strong>Teaching and/or learning innovation</strong></p> <ul> <li>For teaching, this includes new teaching processes and approaches (e.g., andragogy and pedagogy), relevant to how the proposed technology will be situated in an educational setting.</li> <li>For learning, this includes new learning processes, principles, and theories (e.g., cognitive, behavioral, affective, socio-cultural, social, epistemological, problem-based, project-based, developmental, and other perspectives) relevant for how the proposed technology will be situated in a learning setting, to include home, school, or workplace.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Technology innovation</strong></p> <ul> <li>This includes new and emerging technologies within the teaching and learning context (e.g., AI-driven technologies; virtual, immersive, embodied, interactive, or augmented environments; multimodal modeling/sensing of cognitive or affective states; language and speech processing; learning analytics and dashboards; and robotics).</li> <li>The technology innovation should advance fields involving computer science, information science, and/or engineering.</li> </ul>