Finally, the details you’ve been waiting for! CMU has lifted the curtain on their $100 million open source toolkit, called OpenSimon, which is intended to turn any classroom into a learning science laboratory. As we have previously mentioned, CMU planned to unveil the toolkit at our summit and will be piloting its rollout this year with the EEP network. The intention is not to focus on the software but on the applied learning science methodology that CMU has developed, which they call learning engineering. But you can’t do science with out lab equipment, so they’re giving away $100 million worth of virtual lab equipment for free.
The new news in this announcement is that CMU and EEP will be collaboratively developing some on site learning engineering workshops that EEP will offer to organizations that want to get started learning some foundational but useful techniques. These short courses will also prepare the participants for more in-depth offerings by the university, including a special winter edition of their summer workshop that will be EEP-flavored.
Be sure to check out the web site with the OpenSimon toolkit. This is just a start; there will be much more support to come.