Master of Educational Technology and Applied Learning Sciences (METALS)

The METALS program is a union of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and the Department of Psychology which brings significant value to the program.  We strongly believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and that we can all learn from each other.  METALS not only intersects Psychology and HCII but it is at the crossroads of cognitive science, statistics, computer science, education and design. To understand how people learn, our students are trained in applying cognitive science methods to map learning objectives to sub-objectives and finally to well-designed instructional activities. To continuously improve instruction, we need to collect and analyze student progress. To do that our students learn how to use statistics to analyze extremely large datasets (data analytics). These analyses drive continuous improvement. To create effective online educational courseware, our students need to understand at least the basics of tutor creation. We teach our students to use software engineering techniques to create these tutors. We teach our students how to design an appropriate curriculum using the latest theories.