Research Centers

Center for Technology and School Change

The Center for Technology and School Change helps schools integrate technology into their curricula and daily lives, by planning with schools for the use of technology, educating teachers how to use it, planning curriculum projects that include technology, helping teachers to implement projects, and assessing the effect of technology on schools. The Center is based on the idea that technology will have a large impact on the structure of schooling, as it has in the past, and that schools must plan for the kinds of change they want it to have. We believe that technology should be integrated with curriculum in ways that emphasize active student learning, collaboration, interdisciplinary learning and problem-solving in areas that are meaningful to schools, and conducts site-based research. 

COGMOS Design Lab

The COGMOS Laboratory is a collective of students led by Professor Jin Kuwata of CMLTD, Teachers College Columbia University. Our mission is to research, design, and develop experimental learning experiences that solve unique and neglected learning problems, in unconventional ways. COGMOS emphasizes the process and practice of design and development, often with code/programming. Through hands-on work and mentorship, students learn what it means to be a designer at the intersection of learning and technology, as they prepare to enter the field. Recent work revolves heavily around: "Ways people learn to code," and embedded issues relating to problem-solving, social learning, and meaning-making.

Games Research Lab

Through an understanding of play, the Games Research Lab seeks to gain knowledge of human cognition, collaboration, media effects, modern culture, creativity, improvisation and other factors within games that have implications for education. Faculty and students involved with the Games Research Lab have broad-ranging interests, and the lab has resources allowing the study of video games, traditional board and card games, role-playing games, games for teaching and learning, "serious" games, media literacy, the psychology of games, and related topics.

For more information, please visit: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/games-research-lab/

Gizmo EdTech Lab

Gizmo EdTech Lab examines how innovative technologies (i.e., humanoid robots, robotic systems, games for learning, pedagogical agents/avatars, virtual and mixed reality environments) can prepare students for future learning, facilitate peer learning, design relationships that act as a threshold to learning, instruction, and assessment in the STEAM and biological science subject areas.
Much of the research within the lab involves examining how technological artifacts (e.g., robots and digital games) can engage students in learning, and developing applications that test theories about conditions for learning. The lab conducts research both within the K-12 classroom environment and laboratory setting.

Human-Centered AI and Learning Lab

Human-Centered AI and Learning (HAIL) lab explores research and topics on AI in education, AI Literacy, Robotics, Learning Analytics, Educational Data Mining, Chatbots, Conversational Agents, and Natural Language Processing. These topics/technologies are often interlinked/ connected and found in many of our surroundings. The lab was previously known as STEAM Garage. All are welcome to join our activities, guest-speaker lectures, seminars or workshops!

iDesign Lab

As innovators in the fields of communication, media, and learning technologies, students in CMLTD program adopt the role of the reflective practitioner in their research and design. iDesign Lab provides the resources, experiences, and discussions to support students exploration, design, and research of new ideas, technology, or learning design.

When developing projects, students generally are responding to important ideas or beliefs held by colleagues implicitly in their work. They also accumulate knowledge in their design or implementation to build upon knowledge in their field. In an effort to 
make implicit knowledge accumulated in the process of design and implementation more explicit to all CMLTD students, develop a shared body of resources for students in CMLTD to benefit from personally and collectively, and offer the community of scholars and developers interested in similar issues, CMLTD students and affiliates have developed a Web presentation of their own intelligent, innovative, and thought-provoking projects.

Media and Social Change Lab (MASCLab)

Snow Day Learning Lab

The Snow Day Learning Lab is the research group and design laboratory of Dr. Nathan Holbert and is located at Teachers College, Columbia University. Our primary goal is to understand how children make sense of their world through play. To that end we make and study games, toys, and technologies that both offer children opportunities to experience and explore personally interesting phenomena, and further our understanding of cognition.

The Transformative Learning Technologies Laboratory (TLTL)

The Transformative Learning Technologies Laboratory (TLTL) designs and researches new technologies for education. We understand new technologies not only as a way to optimize the existing educational system but as a transformative force that can generate radically new ways of learning. Everything we develop -- from low-cost robotics kits to full-blown digital fabrication labs -- is in support of project-based, student-centered, constructionist learning, focusing on invention, innovation, and collaborative problem-solving.