Ultralab's research

Ultralab is a team of action researchers, committed to innovation, discovery and communicating our findings.

Ultralab believes in research methodology that incorporates co-research, ethnography and ethical consideration.

We believe in piloting on the small-scale, growing projects to large-scale and then handing them over to organisations to establish educational services.

Our position can be defined by Ultralab's law, first devised by Ultralab's founder Stephen Heppell and published in the Royal Society of the Arts Journal Supplement 'Education Futures' published in March 2000.

Ultralab's law states:

"With new technologies, between denial and adoption is the space for innovation and that is where radical progress is made"

New learning technology often challenges the status quo, leading to denial (eg mobile phones banned from school), and then, after new practice has been developed to accommodate the opportunities offered by learning technology, adoption is possible.

Ultralab inhabits the space for innovation, and according to Stephen Heppell:

"Sometimes that space between denial and adoption is measured in decades, sometimes in months. What is clear is that between those two phases lies opportunity. It is that space in which real progress is made and where we find the relatively few organisations exploring eLearning and developing the concept in a rapid and arguably quite subversive way."