CALST treats learning as one of the most profound intellectual activities a human can engage in. Our community gathers around a shared question: how do people learn, and how can we support that process — across the disciplines that touch it?
We run as an independent research community, unaffiliated with any specific academic society or institution.
What we care about
Discussion without excuses
We don’t hide behind “too busy” or “outside my field.” Members engage seriously with their own research and with each other’s, asking sharp questions in service of understanding rather than performance.
Cross-disciplinary perspective
The questions surrounding learning don’t fit neatly into any single field. By bringing together different methods, vocabularies, and assumptions, CALST helps members see their own work from new angles.
Long-term relationships
We’re not optimizing for one-off encounters. From master’s students to early-career faculty, we’re building durable relationships across career stages — relationships members can lean on for years, not just meetings.
Research themes
The topics discussed at CALST include — though they overlap, never cleanly:
- AI in education — research on personalizing and adapting to how individuals actually learn
- Knowledge engineering for learning support — intelligent tutoring systems, adaptive learning environments, ontologies
- Learning sciences and engineering — building hypotheses, designs, and validations into the learning loop
- Applied cognitive science — reading learning processes through the lens of cognitive theory
- Technology-enhanced learning — VR/AR, mobile, and online collaboration tools
- HCI for education — user-centered design of learning interfaces
- Learning analytics & educational data mining — understanding learners and education through data
Around these themes, we want to keep growing as a community where new questions and perspectives find a home.