Our Mission

Education is the most powerful engine of social change and growth, but it needs fundamental change if it is to deliver the promise of an equitable, knowledge-based society. Information technologies are the most vital force for change in education, because they create exciting new options for teaching and learning. Our mission is to stimulate the needed change by creating innovative opportunities to learn that use information technologies.

The combination of computers and networking used in structured, well-designed, collaborative learning environments will create unprecedented opportunities for learning at all levels, for all learners. The ability to offer well-designed, interactive, computer-intensive learning opportunities to anyone, anywhere will influence every learner, teacher, and educational institution. The Concord Consortium undertakes research and development that is the backbone for this kind of change.

Our mission is to stimulate large-scale, technology-based improvements in teaching and learning. Education is the single most important investment a society can make in its future. Quality education is essential to help people everywhere realize their full potential. But education needs enormous changes if it is to deliver on this promise. Its huge size, vested interests, and outmoded traditions prevent change.

New information technologies are the most vital force for change in education because they create exciting new options for teaching and learning. Information technologies have the potential to make huge improvements in education over the next decade as they reshape society and create new learning opportunities. Learners everywhere of all ages could be using information technologies to learn more and to improve their personal learning capacity.

Whether this potential will be realized for all students depends on the ability of education to reinvent itself at all levels. Extensive research and development is needed to support this kind of change. Information technologies create options that force us to reexamine our underlying assumptions and challenge us to create better approaches and institutions. Careful research and innovative developments based on a thorough understanding of technological and learning possibilities is needed to meet this challenge. The Concord Consortium has assembled the people and expertise to undertake the required research and development.