Defining Immersive Learning
By Phillip Motley, Beth Archer-Kuhn, Catharine Dishke Hondzel, Jennifer Dobbs-Oates, Michelle Eady, Janel Seeley, Rosemary Tyrrell
As part of my teaching responsibilities at Elon University, I have taught a global service learning course many times. The students who take this course learn disciplinary content and professional skills in digital media and communications through working in partnership with international organizations. The chance to work with a community partner in the authentic, global context for a sustained amount of time always creates unique learning opportunities for the students.
The course is part of a one-year professional master’s degree program in interactive media and was taught during the university’s January term—a 3.5-week intense experience in which students take only one course. My observation again and again has been that the course is a pivotal experience for virtually every student who participated. Something magical happens during the course that helps students crystallize the meaning of their graduate experience and sharpen their understanding of what they want to do professionally after completing the program. Initially, I believed this was due to the international component of the course. However, with time and repeated opportunities to teach the course, I suspected that the key ingredient was actually the immersive nature of the experience.
With the help of six amazing colleagues who I connected with through ISSOTL, we began to investigate what immersive learning entails. We initially met in 2019 at the annual ISSOTL conference in Atlanta, and since then we have been exploring the many ways in which immersion can be a significant aspect of the learning process. Along the way I have learned how work-integrated learning, community engagement, simulated experiences, study abroad, and other practices share immersive learning qualities. This article is our attempt to define the pedagogical component that we believe constitutes an immersive learning practice.
Read the TLI article here.
