Various factors advance or impede students’ learning benefits. But our knowledge of these processes is still insufficient. Nor do we know much about how to measure learning benefits and knowledge.

New opportunities
ICT creates new learning opportunities through the use of simulation, animation, sound, vision and film. What’s more, ICT is a part of social, institutional and cultural contexts.

Knowing this, we need to know more about how and to what extent ICT may improve learning. We also need to know more about how increased use of ICT affects the way educational institutions organise their teaching.

New skills
Just a few decades ago students and pupils were essentially required to reproduce knowledge. Memorising information was essential. Today, students also have completely different performance requirements. For instance, all students in the upper secondary school should be able to read about and understand how scientific experiments are carried out in the natural sciences.

Concepts like learning communities and productive interactions are starting points for research teams that want to understand how new forms of interaction and learning environments may stimulate curiosity and the transfer of knowledge in different subjects.

Several approaches
With a variety of research projects, section 3 intends to reflect the multitude of approaches in theory, design and methods in this important field of research. The KUL programme’s support of several projects in the field of learning and ICT, signals a wish to strengthen Norway ’s international standing in this field of research.