URBANA – When Professor Nicholas Burbules envisions the classroom of the future, he doesn't see large lecture halls filled with hundreds of students listening to a professor.

He sees them in coffeehouses or residence halls, interacting with teachers on iPhones, doing homework over the Internet or watching lectures remotely.

Heck, most of that future is already here. Wireless access, digital media and "smart" technology are radically changing the way professors think about teaching and how – and what – students learn.

The University of Illinois College of Education has created the Ubiquitous Learning Institute to study the phenomenon, measure its impact on learning, and sort out what works and what doesn't.

"Learning doesn't just happen in the schools. It happens in the workplace, it happens in coffeehouses. Especially with the Internet, it's an anytime, anywhere opportunity," said Burbules, director of the new institute.

Education faculty decided several years ago to make technology issues, and e-learning generally, a strategic priority of the college, he said. They wanted to examine online programs and gain "a broader understanding of the impact of technology on learning in many venues" – learning that is everywhere, or ubiquitous.

That includes Web-based social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook and other collaborative ways to produce and share information over the Internet.

Among other questions, the institute will study what the impact will be on schools and universities.

"It's a challenge for formal institutions to rethink the ways we do things – our teaching structures, our motivational philosophies," he said. "Young people especially are using these new technologies in really new ways that we need to catch up with."

More in Sunday's News-Gazette.