HSD: Research Community Development: Distributed Learning and Collaboration (DLAC) for Next Generation Educational Settings

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This project seeks to carry out research community development in the area of distributed learning and collaboration for next-generation educational settings. The project is a follow-up to the international Distributed Learning and Collaboration Symposium (DLAC, reported at http://dlac-research.net) lead-funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and hosted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) in June 2006. This new project cuts across domains like artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, net-based communication systems, online learning, pedagogical agent systems, science, mathematics and engineering education reform, and international education development. The investigators contend that high-performance learning environments of the future will require profound steps of integration if those learning environments are to immersively and fully engage learners in the challenging and changing forms of science, mathematics, or engineering, to enable new forms of meaningful collaboration become part of the rhythm of daily experience, and to enable teachers to undertake new and more meaningful tasks.Some of the most important advances in fields critical to these new learning environments have come as a result of strategic investments by NSF and others in the U.S.A., but many of the most important or successful pacesetters are researchers in other nations. They possess experimental approaches, data, discoveries and ways of analyzing and resolving problems that are crucial to the work of U.S. investigators. This project's goal is to build an integrative and productive international research community whose participants are at home with the language, traditions, approaches, and frontiers of each other. The project will be carried out through multiple mechanisms. A formal research symposium, "DLAC-II" will take place at the Knowledge Media Research Centre (KMRC) in Tuebingen, Germany. KMRC will co-fund this symposium. A series of web-based research seminars with participants internationally will take place before and after the DLAC-II. The project will also provide seed support for a series of international collaborations among early career investigators.