Science of Learning and Assessment

This is an interdisciplinary programme at the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, biology,  and machine learning merged with theory and practice of testing and measurements. By combining courses, students create an individual trajectory for their research goals, and gain skills from various teaching approaches to understand mental processes such as thinking, learning and personality development.

Students will have the opportunity to work with physiological and neuroimaging methods such as eye-tracking, electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to relate physiological and brain metrics to mental processes such as cognition, affect  and action.

Students can also train on psychometric approaches for assessing and developing tools that can describe and predict human performance in children and adults.  By mastering such methods students gain skills for creating, adapting, gamifying tests and other tools.

Importantly, students learn by practice to design experiments, recruit research participants, collect data, analyze data with advance statistical and machine learning methods. They gain experience in interpreting the data for practical applications in education and industry and in presenting their research in written and oral form. 

The programme features academic and industry internships with HSE laboratories and centres, as well as external partners.

In addition to core and elective courses, students will:

• gain practical experience that can benefit research project. Each student completes two projects (12 ECTS credits) in two years and  two research internships. Internships can be carried out at HSE University, and partner organizations, including FIPI, FIOCO, MCCO, ECOPSY, Skyeng, Formatta, Algorithmika, "Humanitarian Technologies", and others. Students can identify and propose their own internship location.
• attend master classes and invited seminars by international colleagues: the programme attracts researchers, consultants, and teachers from the world's leading scientific centres.
• design experiments with behavioural and neuroscience tools such as MRI, EEG and eye-tracking.
• create tests, questionnaires and assessment tools for education, human resources, psychology, scientific research in various fields.
• learn to work with individuals of different ages and various backgrounds.
• apply computational psychometric approaches: analyze behaviour on a digital footprint, apply multidimensional models, learn R and Python programming languages, use artificial intelligence competently, and seek data-driven and evidence-based solutions.

The programme welcomes students from various backgrounds with an interest in education, developmental cognitive neuroscience, assessment, psychometrics and interdisciplinary methods . Our students’ academic backgrounds includes education, psychology, sociology, linguistics, biology, economics, computer science, management, philosophy, history, geography, and mathematics.

Detailed information on admissions requirements can be found in the portfolio criteria . 

Parents are interested how they will improve their children’s learning.  Older adults are interested in aging better and living longer.  Education across the world is influenced by findings in neuroscience.  Developed nations are interested in learning how to develop cognitive capital to maintain or rise in rankings of economic competitions.   Graduates from this program will be able to contribute to industries associated with issues of learning, assessment and development across the lifespan. 

A degree in Science of Learning and Assessment will prepare students for a variety of career paths.   We expect that some students will follow a higher academic degree and continue in academia in Russia and abroad.  Others have many options in local and international governmental, non-governmental organizations.  Some examples include: industrial lab researchers, medical lab researcher, biotechnology assistant, neuropsychology assistant, youth worker, elderly program organizer, human computer interaction officer, video game developer, science journalist, educational assistant.