SILT Labs
Ideas need somewhere to be questioned.
SILT Labs is the design bridge between a research question and a learning system. Early systems should help us understand what is useful, what fails, and what should not be built.
An emerging programme. We are not presenting validated results or completed evaluations here.
Start with a learning need
Define the learner, life stage, learning context, intended outcome, and conditions under which technology might help. Begin with a hypothesis that can be challenged, not a feature looking for a classroom.
Build the smallest useful system
Explore feedback patterns, agent roles, teacher review, recall prompts, and privacy-conscious memory. Specify boundaries and failure cases alongside intended behavior.
Observe more than completion
Evaluate understanding, retrieval, explanation, transfer, agency, accessibility, and educator workload. Our expanding research interests also ask how systems influence cognitive health, wellbeing, behavioural health, and everyday habits over time. Examine unintended effects and who benefits or is excluded, across realistic lifelong learning contexts.
Let evidence change the design
Promising ideas may advance into new prototypes, pilots, or testing environments. Other ideas may need revision or should stop. Sharing limitations and open questions is part of useful research, not a weakness to hide.
