The Concord Consortium was founded in 1994[1] as an educational research and development organization to create large-scale improvements in K-14 teaching and learning through technology.

[4] The Concord Consortium's first projects, funded by the National Science Foundation beginning in 1994, focused on guided student inquiry and the use of emerging technologies.

The Concord Consortium's major areas of research and development are modeling and simulations, probeware, mobile computing, online learning, and assessment.

The company's research on models and simulations in education has focused on molecular literacy and making complex topics understandable and accessible at earlier grades.

Molecular Workbench software, which won Science Magazine's 2011 SPORE Prize,[12][13] provides hundreds of interactive simulations for teaching and learning physics, chemistry, biology and nanotechnology.

Using digital scientific probes and sensors that collect real-time temperature, motion, gas pressure, light and other data and display it for analysis on laptops and hand-held devices[18] has been a focus of the Concord Consortium since its founding.

Concord Consortium research has shown the effectiveness of sensors and handhelds in elementary and middle school inquiry-based science units.