In January, the university launched the Science of Learning Institute to better understand the processes and underpinnings of human learning.The institute, believed to be the first of its kind, was forged with the goal of understanding learning at all levels of scientific inquiry, including how the brain changes through learning, how development and aging affect our ability to learn, how neurological and psychiatric diseases disrupt or change learning, and why there are such vast individual differences that naturally occur among learners.
The Science of Learning Institute seeks to create an integrated understanding of how learning varies as a function of basic learner characteristics (e.g. over the life span, among the typically developing child, the challenged learner, the gifted student), how these characteristics interact with different environments and learning settings to produce variation in learning outcomes, and how interactions with intelligent artificial learning systems can enhance and optimize human learning.
We all know Johns Hopkins as a place whose central mission is learning—the acquisition and dissemination of “knowledge for the world.” Today, we announce a signature initiative that focuses on understanding the process of learning itself.