Learning Research Lab

Over 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. The best videos inform, instruct and even inspire. Faculty have created and used video to transform many aspects of teaching and learning, but we’ve not yet systematically turned the camera back on ourselves to improve interaction in the classroom. How can the power of video be harnessed to improve how we teach and learn?

In 2013, the Learning Research Lab was created to do just that. We equipped two rooms with cameras to capture classroom activity and software that lets researchers review, annotate, and analyze the intersection of faculty, students, and technology.

The lab consists of two rooms. The first is a user interface lab that focuses on how users interact with devices. The second is a classroom with microphones and dual cameras on each table that capture interactions among students. Teachers may request a formal study of a particular teaching technique or simply use the lab for self assessment. Contact Dr. Robert McKelvain for a study of user interfaces or Dr. Jennifer Shewmaker to study group interaction.

Purpose
Encourage evidence-based culture of teaching and learning by working with faculty, graduate assistants, and other researchers to:

  1. review literature on teaching and learning research
  2. define research problems
  3. design related experiments
  4. conduct experiments
  5. analyze results
  6. report results internally and externally


Serve as the primary space for usability studies to examine individual and very small group use of:

  1. consumer apps
  2. ACU-produced teaching and learning apps
  3. commercially-produced teaching and learning apps
  4. social apps


Types of Research

  1. lab-based studies of individuals and small groups
  2. software usability studies, especially with mobile devices
  3. classroom-based studies of teacher practices and student interactions
  4. semester-long studies of teaching and learning strategies