Industry Consortium on Learning Engineering (ICICLE)

The past 20 years have seen the emergence of many new tools, products, media formats, and technologies meant to support learning, education, and training. In recent years, the use of learning technology in school, on the job, and in our everyday lives has accelerated dramatically. These technologies include MOOCS; mobile learning; serious games; simulations; virtual and augmented reality; big data and learning analytics; open badges and micro-credentials; pedagogical agents (AIs); online laboratories; learning management systems; elearning authoring tools; and even Google, Siri, and Alexa.

There is a significant engineering aspect to the development and deployment of these learning technologies that is supported by a portfolio of existing and planned standards, but that has yet to coalesce as an identified field of endeavor. Learning Science research has generated many of these new technologies and explored their potential benefits. Experience and analysis by working engineers, in a wide range of operational environments, will offer additional guidance about the capabilities and limitations of the underlying technologies; how to use them to accomplish instructional goals; and how to evaluate the effectiveness of both the technologies and the various pedagogical innovations they afford.

Motivated by the need to provide this guidance, leading learning tech organizations around the world started the ICICLE project in January, 2018.

Exploration and deliverables

This Industry Connections (IC) Program is focused on Learning Engineering with goals to explore and deliver the following:

• Develop a white paper that surveys the collection of IEEE and related learning technology standards and provides guidance concerning their intent, capabilities, and how to apply them
• Identify (or if needed create) examples in the form of open source reference code that learning engineers can use to understand and implement relevant standards
• Organize and hold a conference on Learning Engineering

Initiative Stakeholders

ICICLE seeks participants that can inform and influence:

• The Education Market
  • Schools, school districts, colleges, universities, and adult education programs (inasmuch as they develop or purchase learning systems)
  • Professional education (e.g. medical, legal, …)
  • Educational technology vendors (and the suppliers of the devices and services needed to support these products)
  • Educational publishers and service providers who develop, maintain, or aggregate learning technologies and systems
• The Corporate and Military Training Market
  • Training and talent management organizations (inasmuch as they develop or purchase learning systems)
  • Training technology vendors
  • Training content and service providers who develop, maintain, or aggregate learning technologies and systems.

How to Participate

ICICLE seeks participants to join this activity, that include but are not limited to, education and training technology vendors; textbook and eLearning media publishers; corporate HR/training departments; digital platform vendors (PC, tablet, phone, VR, AR); related industry associations; educational institutions; and government agencies. To express your interest joining, please contact: