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Online learning promises flexibility. In asynchronous courses, students can decide when, how, and in what order to engage with learning materials. Yet this freedom comes with new challenges. Without a prescribed learning sequence, students must design their own pathways, and these choices can shape not only how much they learn, but how difficult learning feels.

Is “pre-training” the unsung hero of effective learning—or just an unnecessary hurdle for already smart students? That’s the research quest Anna Gorbunova, Anastasiia Kapuza, Ouhao Chen, and Jamie Costley embark on in their recent study, Rethinking Pre-training: Cognitive Load Implications for Learners with Varying Prior Knowledge. Published in Frontiers in Psychology, their work dives into how priming your mind before tackling complex material can transform the learning experience, challenging long-held beliefs about how we actually absorb knowledge.

On 23–28 November, the 17th Asian Conference on Education (ACE2025) was held in Tokyo. It brought together colleagues from the International Laboratory of Research and Design in eLearning of the Institute of Education.

For the first time since the begining of the COVID-19 pandemic, our colleagues went to the international offline conference, European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) 2022, which took place in Yerevan, Armenia this year. ECER conferences are held annually, attracting researchers from more than 70 countries, and are organized by the European Educational Research Association. We asked our colleagues to share their impressions of the conference and talk about the research they presented.

The research of the International Laboratory of Evaluation of Practices and Innovations in Education was included in the research base of the Laboratory of Action against Poverty Abdul Latif Jamil (Poverty Action Lab, J-PAL)

Work with the research in the field of evaluation of practice and innovation in education

International Laboratory's staff participated in the Winter School in the Netherlands.

Schools in Moscow are the best at teaching students. This point was recently supported by recently published results of the international TIMSS study. The scores of Moscow students turned out to be higher than not only general Russian scores but also the average scores from Europe. What is the secret of the "Moscow miracle" - opinions differ, and research has not yet been carried out. A group of young scientists from the International Laboratory for Evaluation of Practice and Innovation in Education has found a way to test all hypotheses. The case of New Moscow will help with this. The project received a grant "Evidence-Based Policy 2020" from the Center for Advanced Management Solutions.