ALT and research

At the heart of the ALT overall strategy and philosophy is the importance of research to underpin the effective deployment of technology in support of the learning process throughout education. ALT believes there to be an ongoing requirement to bring together researchers, practitioners, developers, and resource controllers in order to ensure effective embedding and deployment.

ALT's activities in this area include the following.

Connecting

Through its Conferences, Events, Special Interest Groups, Digests and other publications, and through its international outreach, Publications Committee, website and member activities, ALT facilitates connections for researchers whether they are seeking colleagues, opinions, funders, or platforms.

Research Publishing

ALT encourages research papers at its Annual Conference, attended by well over 500 people, and publishes them in the Conference Proceedings. In addition, ALT, through its Publications Committee is responsible for a variety of research publications including Research in Learning Technology, a major international journal covering learning technology.

Informing

The Research Committee takes an overview of all of ALT's research-related activities. With a variety of funding sources we have produced a set of guides titled "What research has to say for practice", as a user-editable wiki. These get to the core of our charitable object and the initial versions have been written by leading researchers. The Research Committee is also responsible for ALT's Research Strategy, and for policy consultation responses such as the one we submitted in December 2009 on the Research Excellence Framework.

Brokering

As well as nearly all the large universities in the UK, ALT's membership includes several of the major public funders of learning technology research in the UK and large suppliers of systems and software. Our advice is sought as to whom to involve in projects and we endeavour to bring together researchers, users and funders to mutual benefit. We engage with our sister groups in the US, Europe and Australasia to identify common interests and put researchers in contact with one another. ALT often provides a strong user dimension to significant research projects by coordinating input from institutional members.