IIIT-H launches Centre for Educational Technology and Learning Sciences

IIIT Hyderabad has launched CETLS, an interdisciplinary centre studying how people learn in an AI-driven world. The centre will explore AI’s impact on education, promote deeper and reflective learning, and examine how technology can balance challenge and support.

Hyderabad: The IIIT Hyderabad here on Saturday launched the Centre for Educational Technology and Learning Sciences (CETLS), a new interdisciplinary research centre focused on understanding how people learn in an age increasingly shaped by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The CETLS will bring together learning sciences, cognitive science, psychology and technology to study learning across the lifespan—from K-12 and higher education to the workplace and later life. It will explore how emerging technologies, particularly AI, can be designed not merely to make learning easier, but to make it deeper, more meaningful and more effective.

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A key focus of the centre will be the distinction between using AI to complete a task and using AI as part of the learning process. While AI can provide instant explanations, solutions and summaries, the Centre will investigate how learning environments can be designed to encourage learners to question, experiment, practice, reflect and develop their own understanding, rather than simply consume machine-generated answers.

It will also explore the concept of “slow learning”—learning that allows time for experimentation, reflection and productive struggle. Rather than eliminating every difficulty from the learning process, CETLS will investigate how technology can create the right balance between challenge and support, enabling learners to develop deeper understanding and mastery.

Launching the Centre, NASSCOM former president R Chandrashekhar said AI was fundamentally altering education and that society needed to learn how to navigate the transformation.

IIIT Hyderabad founding chairman and CELTS chief mentor Prof Raj Reddy said that with the emergence of AI, all known forms of education—from KG to PG—need to be re-examined. “If abundant knowledge is already available on the web and AI can make that knowledge even more accessible, we need to ask what should be taught in classrooms and how it should be taught,” he said.

Outlining the objectives of CETLS, IIIT Hyderabad director Prof Sandeep Shukla said the centre would study the impact of AI on learning and education over the short, medium and long term.