What is Digital Educational Engineering?
Digital Educational Engineering (DEE) is about using an engineering approach to design, build, and evaluate (hence the Engineering part) a software-based solution (hence the Digital part) that will address some education-based problem (you guessed it, hence the Educational part).
As such, the DEE team will typically involve software engineers that are passionate about helping people learn.
The projects carried out in DEE typically involve developing software applications, which can utilise a range of digital technologies, such as:
- Mobile apps,
- Web-based applications,
- Machine learning,
- Virtual reality,
- Augmented reality,
- or pretty much any digital technology as needed.
The purpose of such applications might be to serve one of many situations:
- A learning solution intended to be used directly by the target learners (e.g., to help them develop a deeper understand of something),
- A teaching solution intended to help the instructor (e.g., for streamlining assessment, or increasing learner engagement), or
- A discovery solution to find something interesting (e.g., data analytics to understand how students learn or engaged in the learning process).
In most cases, the end users of these applications are students/learners. But this is not always the case.
An important aspect is that the solution developed needs to be based on sound learning theories, rather than just being “yet another app”.
If you have any specific requirements for an area you are involved in, or if you are a prospective student interested in this research area, please reach out.