Since Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University was established in 1970 we have been central to The Open University’s mission to be the world leader in researching, innovating and delivering supported, open and distance learning. Since then we have contributed to research across many significant developments within education, driving understanding of how innovative technology can support learning, teaching and assessment. Explore our research programmes which focus on distinct areas of innovation taking place in IET.

As we operate within the OU, our academics have the capability to drive leading research through IET alongside teaching at the largest academic institution in the UK. This has allowed us to build a rich history of world-leading educational research, working with some of the pioneers in educational technology, open learning and many other areas of innovative pedagogy. Resultantly, there are a number of affiliated groups, teams and research areas associated to IET.

The history of IET covers our leadership in the most ground-breaking developments within educational technology including developments in computer-based learning, digital learning and remote learning. This has allowed us to support the advancements of The Open University, establishing how distance teaching and learning can be successful across all levels of education. More recently we have contributed research to mainstream topics such as open learning, virtually augmented reality learning and distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic and new normal. 

In July 2020 Denise Whitelock was appointed as the new Director of IET, developing from her background of over twenty years’ experience in designing, researching and evaluating online and computer-based learning in Higher Education. Denise leads IET’s research and development strategy, responsible for academic and administrative management, planning and delivery.

The City Science Lab (CSL) at HafenCity University Hamburg explores the digitalization of cities through transdisciplinary research and real-world experimentation. Founded in cooperation with the MIT Media Lab, the lab operates at the intersection of science, public administration, civil society, and urban practice.

CSL develops digital tools and methods to foster participation, collaboration, and transparency in urban development. Its work is anchored in a strong commitment to co-creation, open knowledge, and the democratic shaping of digital futures.

The lab serves as a platform for collaboration between academic research and municipal innovation. It engages a wide range of stakeholders from city administrations and local communities to cultural institutions and international partners in shaping just and inclusive digital transformations.

Key research areas include digital twins for urban governance, data-based participation tools, open urban data infrastructures, and the cultural
dimensions of climate adaptation. CSL combines methodological experimentation with concrete implementation in real urban settings.

As part of HafenCity University, CSL contributes to research and the education of future urban researchers and practitioners. Its team brings
together expertise from diverse backgrounds, from urban studies, design, political science, informatics, and planning to the arts.

CSL is an active member of national and international networks that explore digital futures, urban sustainability, and participatory innovation. It sees itself not only as a research unit, but as a civic interface and critical actor in the negotiation of future urban technologies.

Digital Futures is a cross-disciplinary research centre with the mission to address societal challenges through digital transformation. Established in 2020 by KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University, and RISE, it is supported by the Swedish Government’s Strategic Research Area initiative.

Bringing together academia, industry, and the public sector, Digital Futures conducts cutting-edge research in both physical and virtual environments. Its focus areas include smart society building, digitalized industry, health and well-being, and education. Key research themes span cybersecurity and trust, connected and cyber-physical systems, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Digital Futures unites over 200 research groups in an ambitious effort to shape a sustainable and digitally empowered future.

At Digital Futures, three core principles guide all activities: scientific excellence, strategic renewal, and cross-cutting communities.
The Strategic Research Programme lies at the heart of Digital Futures and must embody scientific excellence to successfully achieve our vision.
Innovation and development thrive on renewal, including the recruitment and support of talented junior researchers, exploring uncharted areas of research, and testing bold new ideas. Additionally, collaboration is essential. By connecting diverse scientific disciplines with industry, academia, and the public sector, we foster cross-cutting communities that promote interdisciplinarity and diversity. These broader perspectives create
opportunities to uncover synergies and patterns, enabling impactful research to address a wide range of societal challenges.

To ensure continuous evolution, Digital Futures actively recruits new partners from the industrial and public sectors, as well as expanding its faculty network. By identifying and addressing key industrial and societal challenges within the digitalisation domain, Digital Futures develops scalable solutions—both in terms of commercialisation and new research directions.

The King’s Digital Futures Institute brings together expertise from across all disciplines at King’s College London to forge a better relationship between the individual and technology – through combining technological expertise with a deep understanding of human needs, cultures and behaviours, and by addressing questions of ethics, bias, transparency and responsibility.

Through our research programmes, our educational courses and our external engagement activities we set out to reframe what are usually thought of as purely technical challenges – to be solved through technical fixes – as human and social challenges, that require innovative ways of knowing, responding and making. We aim thereby to help build a future that is more conducive to living well with technology.

The work of the Institute is enacted across four centres: the Centre for Attention Studies, the Centre for Digital Culture; the Centre for Data Futures and the Centre for Technology and the Body.

Through our fellowships, projects and activities we explore questions such as:

• How can we ensure the practice of coding and technological build is rooted in understandings of diversity, discrimination, culture and ethics, rather than having these issues addressed as an afterthought?
• How can we ensure that new technologies are integrated into our lives in ways that promote equity and inclusion, working with, rather than against, fundamental human needs?
• How can we empower individuals and communities through greater awareness (and self-awareness) to shape the development and use of technologies in their lives?
• How might technologies be configured, rethought and repurposed to address simultaneous and overlapping global crises of public health, political trust, social inequalities and ecological breakdown?
• How can we learn from a history of the reception and integration of new technologies  to better confront the challenges of today?

With a focus on addressing the great challenges of our times, EFI recognises that a step change in our responses to these challenges requires disciplinary-neutral spaces, where colleagues can come together in fresh configurations to form new ideas – and spaces where researchers and external partners (from business, industry, government, the cultural and other sectors) mix, meet, and work together on a daily basis.

EFI understands the challenges of today as human and social challenges as much as they are scientific and technical problems, and it is through this commitment to this expansive, cross-disciplinary, vision that the research teams we support are at the leading edge of global thinking.

• We provide strategic research leadership across the University​ on our core themes, supporting interdisciplinary, collaborative, and creative, challenge-led researchthat is co-designed with local communities, the third sector, and business and industry partners. 

• We deliver education with a difference – a deeply interdisciplinary curriculum, featuring innovation and data-driven collaboration with a focus on complex global and social challenges. The Futures Institute education portfolio brings together all 21 schools from across the University of Edinburgh with opportunities in undergraduate, postgraduate, executive education and beyond. 

• We build collaborative and transformational partnerships with organisations, industry and business,from key sectors of Financial Services and Fintech, Creative Industries, Public Services and Tourism, Travel and Festivals to tackle challenges, improve products and services, and develop new ones through better use and understanding of data.  

Edinburgh Futures Institute is one of six Data-Driven Innovation hubs at the University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University. The Institute’s innovation ecosystem is part of a regional powerhouse for collaboration and ethical and creative data innovation with industry partners.

The Futures Institute occupies the iconic, category-A listed Old Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh following an extensive seven-year, multimillion-pound restoration. The Futures Institute opened its doors to the public in June 2024.

As custodians of this much-loved, Edinburgh city landmark, Edinburgh Futures Institute aims to fulfil the pledge set in stone above the main entrance: ‘patet omnibus’ – open to all.