Carnegie Mellon Creates Simon Initiative To Better Understand Student Learning

Carnegie Mellon University today launched the Simon Initiative to accelerate the use of learning science and technology to improve student learning.

Named to honor the work of the late Nobel Laureate and CMU Professor Herbert Simon, the initiative will harness CMU’s decades of learning data and research to help improve educational outcomes for students.

As part of the initiative, CMU will provide open access to a large bank of educational technology data — detailed data about how people learn and how effective learning software can be designed and deployed.

The Simon Initiative will focus on several areas where technology impacts education, ranging from data-rich research solutions to improving the residential experience of students at CMU campuses. The goals of the project include: