The Mission and Character of LRDC Today
LRDC fosters an environment in which research initiatives relating to the science, practice, organization and technology of learning, teaching and training are born and thrive. Often, when initiatives are completed, new ideas and directions emerge. These new ideas and directions, over time, become the impetus for LRDC scholars and researchers to form new groupings.
After several decades of quality research, LRDC has attracted diverse funding sources. Some funding sources target specific areas for their grants, which resulted in the formation of several multi-investigator research groupings, with substantial funding and strong missions. For the most part, however, LRDC will continue to maintain its mix of larger long-term multi-investigator programs operating in concert with smaller single-investigator projects.
While all LRDC activities focus on learning, and most have links to the cognitive sciences, not all projects fit neatly into a single mission statement. All activities, nonetheless, contribute to one or more of the areas of cognitive research on learning and teaching, reform and improvement of schooling, and individual and organizational learning in the workplace. Whenever possible, LRDC makes an effort to leverage information technologies developed for, or as a result of, its work in all of these areas.
