At Worcester Polytechnic Institute there is a hive of activity related broadly to research in smarter educational technology. WPI has received over 20 million dollars in funding for smarter educational technology. Its easy to get funding in this area at its obvious that we can make education better if we apply computers in novel ways.
Advanced Educational Technology is interdisciplinary, and we have students doing elements of this work getting an number of degrees (Computer Science, Data Science, Learning Science and Technologies, and finally IMGD (e.g. educational games)).
Professors Heffernan's Lab is creating smart ed. tech. He helps other use the ASSISTments platform to run randomized controlled trails.
Professor Jacob Whitehill is doing deep learning and crowd sourcing for education. He is moving from Harvard to WPI in the summer of 2016.
Professor Joe Beck develops new algorithms for educational data mining.
Professor Erin Ottmar develops Graspable Mathematics (with colleagues) that allow student to graph parts of mathematical expressions and move the around.
Professor Ivon Arroyo build intelligent tutoring systems, as well exploring novel ways for student to use technology in classrooms.
Professor Kathi Fisler is another professor that also build educational technology, specifically for teaching computer science education.
Professor in HCI like Lane Harrison also do empirical work in how to make user interface that are effective.
While these are some of the folks that work in this area there is a lot of cross-fertilization. For instance, Professor Jian Zou, a statisticians works with Professor Heffernan in developing novel ways to analyzing experiments