Margaret Riel

Senior Researcher

Dr. Margaret Riel is a senior researcher at the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. Her research focuses on the relationship between teacher learning and instructional practices mediated by technology. She works with Bill Penuel and Barbara Means on an NSF funded grant to explore the use of social network analysis as a tool for understanding how teachers' interactive patterns relates to the school's capacity for integrating technology. She has also joined the research team (with funding form the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) that is evaluating how small, personalized, schools can serve as a reform strategy for urban high school districts.

Prior to joining SRI, Dr. Riel was the Associate Director of the Center for Collaborative Research in Education, at the University of California, Irvine where she developed university and school research partnerships. She helped design and evaluate a technology integration program for teachers, administrators and the school community in Southern California. Her UCI research also included working with Hank Becker on analyzing a National Survey of Teaching, Learning and Computing. This study examined the relationships between teacher professional engagement and classroom pedagogy.

Dr. Riel continues to direct and participate in projects that use emerging technology to mediate learning. Over the past two decades Dr. Riel has designed, researched and directed Learning Circles, a program that brings student/teacher teams from different counties into project-based learning communities over electronic networks. The Learning Circle network is part of the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN). She helped design the model for Passport to Knowledge, an NSF funded "electronic travel" socio-technical network. She works collaboratively with those who are designing ways to augment reality with information and communication technology and to explore the educational potential of other emerging technologies.

Dr. Riel also teaches in the online doctoral program of Pepperdine University, where she supports promising educators through a process of action research using a range of innovative education and communication tools, including SRI's Tapped In.

Education 

Professional Experience 

Research Areas at CTL

Evaluation
Learning Environments
Teacher Learning

Current Projects at CTL

Past Projects at CTL

Publications