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Ed.D., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, (1972)
Prior to becoming a Senior Research Fellow, for 22 years Chris Dede was the Timothy E. Wirth Professor in Learning Technologies. His fundamental interest is developing new types of educational systems to meet the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century. His research spans emerging technologies for learning, infusing technology into large-scale educational improvement initiatives, developing policies that support educational transformation, and providing leadership in educational innovation. Currently, Dede is a Co-Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded National Artificial Intelligence Institute in Adult Learning and Online Education. He co-founded the Silver Lining for Learning initiative and developed a widely used Framework for scaling up educational innovations. From 2001 to 2004, he served as chair of the Learning & Teaching program at HGSE. Dede is an advisor to the digital puppeteering company Mursion, Inc., in which he has an equity stake.
Click here to see a full list of Chris Dede's courses.
We intend to create and use AI technology and systems for making education simultaneously more accessible, affordable, efficient, and effective. We will do so by developing and deploying AI techniques that combine a variety of virtual learning assistants ranging from question answering to question asking, from virtual librarians to virtual laboratories. These virtual agents will be informed by large-scale, fine-grained learning analytics. We will use human-centered design to create socio-technical systems in which teachers, learners and virtual learning assistants live, work and learn together. We will support lifetime education from K-12, through college including community and technical colleges, through the whole life of US workers. We will specifically focus on STEM education, including both formal and informal learning. We will emphasize teacher preparation, broadening participation, and sustained and continuous program evaluation. We will use open educational resources and online education as the two primary vehicles for reaching at least a million learners a year by the end of this five-year program. Dr. Dede at the Harvard Graduate School of Education will serve as Principal Investigator, drawing on his research experience in the design and development of immersive STEM curricula, artificial intelligence (AI), and workforce development. He will provide leadership in design, implementation, and research phases of the project, including the strands on virtual learning assistants, virtual teaching assistants, data repositories, learning analytics, AI tools for teachers, teachable virtual assistants, and AI-augmented socio-technical systems.
Personalized learning is an emerging movement in education, generating both optimism and skepticism in the field. We are optimistic because of the enormous possibilities implicit in helping every learner reach his or her full potential by leveraging advances in technology, but we also recognize challenges to large-scale change due to the thin evidence base and constraining policy and practice environments. We share with many in education a deep commitment to the principles of equity and excellence motivating much of the move to personalized learning. Building on a joint planning process begun in January 2017, the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) and MIT are pleased to submit this proposal for a $30 million joint initiative to improve early literacy through personalized diagnosis and intervention. Because we believe that personalized learning will take root and expand only if it can make demonstrable progress in addressing pressing education challenges, we will focus on applying principles of personalization toward the goal that all children achieve mastery of foundational literacy skills by the end of third grade.