Research for the Higher Education of the Future

AI in higher education, customized learning, and targeted support for students – this is what research at CATALPA, the Center of Advanced Technology for Assisted Learning and Predictive Analytics, is all about.

In CATALPA over 60 scientists work together in a living laboratory. Drawing on their scientific background, they conduct interdisciplinary research into technical and didactic developments and transfer the results into university operations. CATALPA researchers explore practical issues from the perspectives of psychology, computational linguistics, educational science, computer science, and organisational sociology.

With more than 80,000 online students enrolled at the FernUniversität, they have authentic learning environments in a variety of disciplines to identify essential problems, ideate potential solutions with stakeholders, and evaluate and iterate prototypes in lab studies and running course environments. All these efforts strive for the common goal of advancing the added value of technologies and artificial intelligence in higher education and understand the principles of successful design and development of learning technologies in authentic higher education settings.