The Learning Technology Research Group was set up within the Department of Computer Science at Nottingham University to research into the use of computer technology to support education. The group's research interests cover areas such as Computer Aided Learning, assessment mechanisms, collaborative learning environments and course management systems.
The most significant development to emerge from the group to date has been the Ceilidh system. Ceilidh is a general course management system whose core is an automatic-assessment facility for marking students' computer programs. Ceilidh has been used to teach classes of up to 160 at Nottingham and was adopted as the basis of a three year development throughout UK Higher education funded under the UFC's Teaching and Learning Technology Programme (TLTP). It has been taken by over 200 institutions of higher education in over 30 countries.