I am helping Barcelona's La Salle University create an Institute for the Learning Sciences as part of their Busienss Engineering School.

In March 2010 we will begin to offer online masters degree programs in international business, learning sciences, and e-business technology through the Business Engineering School at La Salle in Barcelona. The course content is in English. Mentoring and student teams will be in a choice of English, Spanish, or French.

These will all be learn by doing project based experiences. No classes. No tests. Tuition will be kept at European prices rather than U.S. ones.

Here is the link to their site.

Here is a press release on the creation of the Institute for the Learning Sciences at La Salle.

This program will be open to students who have demonstrated capabilities in developing online learning by doing course offerings or related software experience.  It would also be open to graduates of the e-learning master’s degree program offered by ILS at La Salle.  After one year of work building courses they enter into a seminar that is virtual but from time to time may meet on campus. When deemed appropriate, they will be eligible to start writing a PhD thesis under my supervision.

The research agenda of the new ILS will be directed towards furthering the creation and delivery of new and exciting educational experiences.

This would mean:

• Developing tools to build courses more efficiently
• Testing newly built courses for efficacy
• Creating new ways to make virtual experiences look and feel like real world experiences
• Collecting the wisdom of experts to use as guides and mentors in online learning programs that find expertise automatically as needed
• Developing indexing methods that allow massive video story bases to be accessed easily
• Developing activity models that link actions to expertise
• Developing new kinds of interfaces to knowledge that make software easier to use and more useful in education

The Virtual Ph.D. program is in the planning stage; the launch date is to be determined. Sign up for my RSS feed for updates, or email Patti Perrelli (pattip@socraticarts.com) to be notified when we start accepting applications.

Roger