As founder and convenor of an interdisciplinary, international research group, the London Mobile Learning Group, Norbert led on the development of a coherent theory of mobile learning around a socio-cultural ecology including a framework for planning and analysing examples of mobile learning projects and practice across all phases of formal education as well as informal contexts.

The theory is a response to important ongoing social, cultural, economic, technological and educational developments in a world in flux and focuses in particular on the normalisation of functionally convergent mobile devices and services and their impact on the cultural practices, the learning habitus and the life-worlds of device and service users; and addresses important questions such as the turn towards user-generated cultural resources and the paradigm shift for formal education in which learning is viewed in categories of context, not content.

Norbert has been involved in a number of complex, multi-national, multi-year, EU-funded research projects and has been PI on and participated in a number of research and consultancy projects for UK and international governments, quasi non-governmental organisations and (pan-European) research bodies, including the Higher Education Funding Council as well as the European Commission. The projects include:

• system-level reviews and analyses of provision to support policy making and funding decisions;
• monitoring and evaluation of educational interventions based on specifically devised impact criteria to be able to judge efficacy, for example with the OECD of pan-European technology-based innovations;
• inquiries into professional online and mixed-mode interventions at university level with a view to enhancing pedagogical design and the student experience and learning journey;
• pan-European knowledge-exchange activities; as well as
• theory and pedagogical scenario building linked to empirical validation.