Please welcome our newest colleague, Ido Davidesco, Ph.D. His work involves bringing cognitive neuroscience research that was typically conducted in controlled laboratory environments into the classroom to help further our understanding of real-world learning. Developments in technology now enable portable and wearable brain and eye tracking devices to be used by researchers in working classrooms. Dr. Davidesco uses these emerging technologies to measure the brain activity of groups of students in classrooms. This research has revealed that when working well collaboratively, students exhibit similar brain activity patterns (a phenomena called “brain-to-brain synchrony”). Furthermore, the extent of brain synchrony across students may indicate how engaged students are in class and how much information they retain. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that portable and wearable technologies can be used to capture the dynamic situated interactions among students, teachers and real-world learning environments.

The Two Summers program is one of the most popular programs in the Neag School of Education.