This grant funds the sixth annual inter-Science of Learning Center (iSLC) Conference hosted by the Spatial Intelligence and Leanring Center (SILC) in Philadelphia, PA on February 21-23, 2013. The iSLC Conferences are vital to the graduate students and postdocs who attend them, to the six NSF-funded Science of Learning Centers (SLCs), and to the emerging interdisciplinary field of learning science. Individual students and postdocs attending iSLC 2013 will benefit from visiting Philadelphia, learning from the experiences of their peers, and by being exposed to new and alternative methodologies and paradigms. Most importantly, they are provided with an incredible opportunity to form cross- and inter-disciplinary networks that will serve them and the fields to which they belong for the rest of their careers. Since most graduate students and postdocs typically attend field-specific conferences with little opportunity to interact with peers outside of their respective niches, this is invaluable. This opportunity also allows students to gain practice with presenting their research to a diverse audience, a skill that is of great importance as a scientist. The conference will also promote the understanding of the scientific language used in each center. Career development will be promoted as junior researchers gain experience presenting research, networking with SILC PIs, and through the SLC alumni workshops. One of the goals of the SLC program is to advance scientific discovery while promoting teaching, training and learning. To advance scientific discovery, the researchers attending iSLC 2013 will share and discuss new research findings from the different centers who have related but different perspectives on science of learning research. Discussion sessions will raise new questions that can be investigated in future research. This conference will also promote other goals of the SLC program such as the advancement of scientific discovery while also promoting teaching, training, and learning. A second goal of the SLC program is to enhance the infrastructure for research and education by developing partnerships with researchers in industry and government laboratories. In the researcher's effort to incorporate this goal into iSLC 2013, the researchers have purposely selected three alumni who are currently working in industry. Finally, a third goal of iSLC 2013 is to continue the efforts to build a professional community of young scholars working towards developing an interdisciplinary understanding of learning. The researchers view the networking opportunities afforded by iSLC as an important step towards sustainability for the field. The critical purpose of iSLC is training a new generation of researchers. The researchers see this as the central purpose of iSLC and have thus structured the conference to maximize training opportunities. Not only are participants from difference perspectives brought together, but also from different stages in their careers: graduate students beginning their training, students about the graduate, newly minted Ph.Ds and alumni. By encouraging exchanges between participants, opportunities for training and learning are provided. Students also have the opportunity to serve as discussants. This provides training synthesizing themes and information across presentations -- a skill which is critical for academic success.
Understanding the science of how people learn is central to our understanding of the human mind-brain and to improving learning of people across all ages. Recognizing these facts, the National Science Foundation (NSF) created the Science of Learning Centers program, and invested in 6 Science of Learning centers at various universities across the country. The goal of these 6 centers is to understand specific aspects of learning. For example, how learning differs across formal and informal environments, how people learn spatial information and how learning changes over time. Funding for these centers is coming to an end in 2016 and thus we are at a transitional point in which we need to segue into a new phase of investigating and funding research on the science of learning. However, researchers interested in the science of learning often do not attend the same conferences. For example, someone interested in the neural mechanisms of learning would rarely have a chance to talk to someone interested in learning in the classroom. Thus we saw on opportunity to bring together researchers with the goal of beginning to build a "science of learning" community. We used the NSF funds to fund a workshop to bring together researchers and educators interested in how people learn. The goal of the workshop was to showcase new research on the science of learning and to bring researchers who typically do not interact much, together to foster discussion and collaboration.
