Event Experience

Extended Reality (XR), including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR), is gaining momentum across education and workforce training. Yet many implementations still lack clear alignment with instructional design, limiting their effectiveness and long-term impact. This session introduces the KonnectXR (KXR) Instructional Design Framework, a structured, theory-informed approach that brings together Backward Design, ADDIE, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and adult learning principles to support thoughtful, goal-driven XR integration.

The KXR framework is designed to help educators, instructional designers, and technologists make intentional decisions about when and how to use XR. Rather than starting with the technology, the framework emphasizes alignment between learning outcomes, instructional activities, and assessment. Panelists will share perspectives from faculty development, applied research, and NSF-funded initiatives, along with practical examples drawn from real courses and training contexts.

Participants will explore how XR can support spatial understanding, interaction, and experiential learning without requiring advanced technical expertise. The session also highlights accessibility, inclusion, and the role of open educational resources (OER) to expand access. Attendees will leave with a clear, flexible approach and practical ideas they can apply in their own teaching and design work.

Learning Objectives:

• Apply a structured design approach to align XR technologies (VR, AR, MR) with learning outcomes using the KXR Instructional Design Framework.
• Evaluate XR affordances and constraints to select appropriate modalities that enhance engagement, accessibility, and measurable learning.
• Identify practical strategies and examples for implementing scalable, inclusive XR experiences using OER and emerging technologies across disciplines.

Robin Sullivan, Emerging Technologies Librarian (Emeritus), University at Buffalo

Steven Sturman, Instructional Support Specialist, University at Buffalo

Immersive simulations can transform online learning from “read, quiz, repeat” into environments where learners actively practice complex decision-making and experience the consequences of their choices. This session explores how the Muzzy Lane platform has been implemented as an experiential learning engine across both credit and noncredit courses at LSU Online & Continuing Education. We examine the intentional design purposes behind these simulations, including diagnosing conceptual gaps, developing authentic workplace skills, and providing psychologically safe practice, and describe how those goals inform alignment with course assessments such as exams and a professional capstone. Drawing on implementation across multiple course contexts, we share where simulations meaningfully increased engagement and learner confidence, where they were less effective as predictors of performance, and how learner analytics now guide iterative course redesign. Participants will leave with practical strategies for integrating simulations as mission-aligned, high-impact learning experiences rather than optional add-ons.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain key ways immersive simulations can transform engagement, feedback, and assessment in online credit and noncredit courses.
• Analyze practical lessons learned from piloting a simulation tool at LSU, including benefits, limitations, and alignment considerations.
• Identify questions and criteria to decide whether and how simulation tools can support experiential learning in your courses, with your students, and within your institutional setting.

Kristen Hernandez, Senior Learning Experience Designer, LSU Online & Continuing Education

Laura Vance, Associate Learning Experience Designer, LSU Online & Continuing Education

Online courses often struggle with student disengagement, particularly in asynchronous environments. This session explores how themed course design can transform traditional online classes into immersive, experiential learning environments that foster engagement, critical thinking, and meaningful participation. Drawing on examples from composition courses structured around themes such as fear, natural disasters, and cold cases, this presentation demonstrates how narrative-driven design creates continuity across assignments and encourages deeper student investment.

Participants will explore strategies for integrating multimedia elements, including films such as Twister, podcasts, and real-world case studies, to simulate authentic learning experiences. The session will also highlight how themed instruction supports rhetorical awareness by connecting course content to real-world issues and emotional engagement.

Attendees will leave with practical tools to design or redesign their own courses using cohesive themes, along with a framework for aligning assignments, discussions, and assessments within an immersive learning structure. The session emphasizes adaptability across disciplines and provides scalable approaches for instructors seeking to enhance presence, engagement, and experiential learning in online environments.

Learning Objectives:

• Design a cohesive course theme that enhances engagement and creates narrative continuity in online learning environments.
• Apply strategies for integrating multimedia and real-world content to support experiential and immersive learning.
• Develop aligned assignments and activities that reinforce course themes and promote deeper critical thinking.

Stephanie Maher Palenque, Associate Professor, Grand Canyon University

Experiential learning is a high-impact practice that promotes deep learning by engaging students in authentic experiences followed by structured reflection. However, designing equitable and meaningful experiential learning opportunities for fully online programs, particularly professional programs like the MBA, remains a persistent challenge. When an MBA program transitioned to a fully online model, a central question emerged: how can experiential courses be redesigned in a way that preserves the learner experience while increasing access for non-local students?

Grounded in Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, this session will examine how a place-based, community-engaged course was intentionally redesigned for online delivery without losing its experiential core. Previously, students worked on site with local entrepreneurs or nonprofit leaders to develop tailored business plans. To support online learners distributed across regions (who may not be local to our small-town Nebraska campus), the course was reimagined using virtual partnerships with entrepreneurs around the country, structured experiential activities, and intentional opportunities for reflection and iteration aligned with each stage of Kolb’s cycle.

This session highlights design principles and pedagogical best practices for centering learner experience, accessibility, and alignment in online experiential learning. Participants will leave with practical strategies for adapting their own in-person experiential projects for online or hybrid contexts.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain the stages of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle and how they support meaningful experiential learning in online environments.
• Identify design principles and pedagogical strategies that support accessible, authentic, and community-engaged experiential learning for online learners.
• Understand how to redesign or adapt an experiential class project for online or hybrid delivery.

Erica Lamm-Denny, Instructional Technologist, Creighton University

Through an internal innovation grant at the University of St. Thomas, staff from the Strategic Transformation of Education, Learning and Research (STELAR) Center and colleagues from Career Services took on an ambitious project combining a series of career readiness modules in Canvas (our learning management system) with Bodyswaps, a VR skills development platform, enabling students to practice interview skills, networking skills, and other workplace dynamics. Bodyswaps uses virtual reality settings to prepare students to attend job fairs, interviews, internships, and other career activities with greater confidence by giving them real-world scenarios to respond to, followed by personalized AI-generated feedback on their performance in a safe space.

This self-paced course aggregates the excellent content and systems supported by the Career Center, using Canvas to organize a sequence of activities and modules with career-oriented content, quizzes, opportunities for practice, and reflection. At various intervals while working through the content in the site, students will be prompted to select a Bodyswaps module to practice skills and get feedback about their responses, either through a browser or through an app on their phone or headset.

Students who complete the Canvas modules are able to claim and share digital badges representing competencies acquired in support of Interviewing Strategies and Skills, Networking Opportunities and Skills, and Workplace Collaboration–Mindsets and Skills.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the integrated design of a career readiness program used to create a comprehensive self-paced learning experience.
• Evaluate the pedagogical benefits of using VR technology for career skills development.
• Identify implementation strategies for creating cross-departmental collaborations to support student career preparation.

Lisa Burke, Sr. Director of STELAR (St. Thomas E-learning and Research), University of St. Thomas

Online graduate learners rarely get opportunities to practice high-stakes interpersonal moments before they encounter them in the workplace. Presentations, performance conversations, and project negotiations are typically learned through trial and error on the job, long after formal education ends. This session presents a VR-based leadership simulation designed to close that gap.

Grounded in shared leadership theory and developed for an online graduate program, the simulation places learners in three scenario-based case studies: persuading a manager to approve a project, navigating conflict with a colleague, and receiving critical feedback from an advisor. Each scenario is accessible via Wonda VR, which requires no specialized hardware and was built to complement, rather than replace, existing course structures.

Pilot findings highlight an unexpected pedagogical value: the simulation makes visible the gap between how students think they communicate and how they actually perform under pressure. That moment of self-recognition, achievable at scale in a virtual environment, is difficult to engineer in traditional online instruction.

This session will present findings from a graduate student pilot, walk through the design rationale, and discuss practical considerations for faculty considering VR-enhanced experiential learning in online programs. Attendees will leave with a clearer sense of where low-barrier immersive tools fit within a broader learning design strategy.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain how VR-based simulations can support experiential learning and interpersonal skill development.
• Evaluate the pedagogical value of immersive leadership simulations for revealing communication gaps and supporting learner reflection.
• Identify practical strategies for integrating low-barrier VR tools into online courses to support authentic, high-stakes professional practice.

Meryem Yilmaz Soylu, Research Scientist II, Georgia Institute of Technology

Project VORTEX (Virtual Operational Role-Playing Training Exercise) is a multi-player educational role-playing game (MPERPG) designed to immerse participants in operational experiences that enable them to apply leadership skills. VORTEX is a collaboration between Air University, Air Force ROTC, academia, and industry partners. It aims to address the gap in higher education and professional military training. Traditional classroom instruction, physical leadership reaction courses (obstacle courses), and other team-based experiential activities have fallen short in effectively assessing participants’ leadership competencies or capturing data to support leadership development.

VORTEX creates immersive, time-pressured, and high-stakes role-based missions where participants collaborate in a virtual reality environment. They must apply communication, decision-making, resource management, accountability, and a range of leadership skills amid uncertainty and following mission command directives. VORTEX simulates real-world challenges such as humanitarian crises, competing resources, and contested objectives, which participants solve through competency-based behaviors. Additionally, VORTEX leverages industry innovation to capture behavioral data, enabling participants and leaders to evaluate leadership skills and identify areas for development and growth.

VORTEX is an innovative method of immersive experiential learning that combines role-based MPERPG with real-time data analytics that can inform participants and leadership about an individual’s behavioral competencies. VORTEX embodies the key aspects of STEEP by increasing the demand for competency-based education and the use of data-driven insights on the complex and ambiguous concept of leadership development.

VORTEX is designed to accompany a participant throughout their educational and leadership development journey. Using a data-driven approach and scenario authenticity tailored to the participant’s role and experiences, VORTEX provides a comprehensive method for developing a DNA profile of the participant each time they engage with the VORTEX concept.

Learning Objectives:

• Trace the evolution of Project-X into Project VORTEX and its alignment with Foundational Competencies.
• Identify how immersive, role-based simulations support longitudinal assessment of leadership development.
• Apply insights from Project VORTEX to other contexts in military and higher education training.

Andrew Clayton, Assistant Professor, Air University

Matthew Correia, Chief of Research Integration, Air University

This presentation showcases an award-winning online course that utilizes a gamification design to drive student engagement in a challenging gateway course with a high DFW rate. This session begins by breaking down the gamification strategies, followed by an exploration of the underlying learning theories and design principles that guided our design choices. This session concludes with a review of the design’s overall impact, featuring an in-depth examination of how individual gaming strategies contribute to shifts in student motivation and academic performance.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how specific gamification strategies link to learning theories to solve engagement gaps in high-risk courses.
• Connect specific game mechanics to underlying learning theories and instructional design principles.
• Evaluate the direct impact of individual game mechanics on student motivation and grades to inform their own course design.

Shari Fowler, Assistant Professor, Indiana University

Chongning Sun, Instructional Designer, Indiana University

This session shares a gamified learning experience where students engage in campus-based, real-world scenarios and make decisions that shape immediate outcomes. The design emphasizes clear structure, meaningful choice, and responsive feedback to support active engagement rather than passive learning. Attendees will gain practical strategies for designing interactive learning experiences that are structured, inclusive in entry points, and clearly aligned with learning expectations.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify design strategies that support meaningful decision-based learning experiences.
• Examine how structured feedback and choice improve engagement and clarity.
• Apply simple approaches to design interactive, aligned learning activities.

Renee Harrington, Associate Teaching Professor, North Carolina State University

Online learning often relies on static content, linear pathways, and limited opportunities for authentic decision-making. This session presents a new design pattern for immersive experiential learning: combining student digital twins with AI world models to create adaptive online environments that respond to learner choices in real time. A digital twin can represent the learner, the task, or the learning context, while a world model can forecast likely outcomes, generate branching scenarios, and support reflective replay. Together, these approaches move beyond simulation toward a responsive “learning flight simulator” where students can practice, fail safely, and improve through iteration. The session will share a practical framework for designing these environments, including use cases in cybersecurity and other high-stakes domains, along with considerations for transparency, learner agency, privacy, and assessment. Attendees will leave with a concrete model for applying AI-enabled digital twins and world models to strengthen engagement, decision-making, and transfer of learning in online courses.

Learning Objectives:

• Explain how digital twins and world models can support immersive and experiential online learning.
• Identify one or more course design patterns that use adaptive, branchable learning scenarios.
• Describe key ethical and instructional considerations, including privacy, transparency, and learner control.

Samuel Addington, Lecturer, California State University Long Beach

At the Digital Educational Laboratory at University of Los Andes (Colombia), we use agile experimentation to inform institutional decisions about the adoption of immersive learning in higher education. Our work combines 360° video with interactive layers to develop targeted, context-driven learning experiences.

We begin with small prototypes co-designed with faculty to test specific use cases. An initial emergency room simulation with the School of Medicine was designed, developed, and implemented in three months, generating early feedback to refine both the experience and the development process. These results enabled the expansion of immersive scenarios across disciplines, including new simulations in Medicine co-created with communities in remote regions, as well as applications in Law, Business, and Education.

Through iterative cycles, we have developed practical criteria to assess where immersive approaches may add value—particularly in contexts that are difficult to access due to safety, geographic, or economic constraints. This process has also strengthened internal capabilities for analysis, design, and production, while clarifying the limits of current technologies.

Our work is beginning to inform sustainable approaches to scaling immersive practices, including early considerations for viable models beyond individual pilots. This session presents an experience-based approach to evaluating impact and informing adoption decisions in institutional contexts.

Learning Objectives:

• Explore criteria and considerations for assessing when immersive learning experiences may add value in specific educational contexts.
• Examine how agile experimentation approaches can inform the design and evaluation of immersive learning.
• Consider strategies for building sustainable institutional approaches to adopting and scaling immersive learning practices.

Diego Ernesto Leal Fonseca, Executive Lead, Digital Educational Laboratory, University of Los Andes

Simulations are often associated with advanced technologies such as virtual and extended reality. This session reframes simulation as a function of structure, constraint, and participation rather than platform. Using widely available tools already present in many institutions, instructors can create immersive learning experiences that support authentic practice without relying on specialized or costly technologies.

Drawing on practical examples, this session is an exploration of how roles, decision pathways, and structured reflection can create meaningful simulation experiences inside learning management systems and other familiar digital environments. The talk will highlight how simple design choices can foster interaction, exploration, feedback, and learner agency.

The session also positions simulation as an equity issue. High-tech environments can centralize authorship and limit access to design and adaptation, while low-barrier approaches can distribute authorship and expand participation for both instructors and learners.

Learning Objectives:

• Examine how roles, constraints, and shared decision-making contribute to immersion and engagement in simulation-based learning environments.
• Analyze how low-barrier simulations can distribute authorship and support behavioral, emotional, social, and cognitive engagement.
• Consider a lightweight simulation concept for implementation in a learning management system using existing institutional tools and learner-centered approaches.

Graham Johnson , Instructional Designer, Fordham University

Steven D'Agustino, Senior Director for Online Programs, Fordham University

As institutions expand immersive and experiential learning in online environments, instructional design teams must not only support these innovations but also build the capacity to sustain them. One approach is through internships that immerse emerging instructional designers in authentic, practice-based work. This session shares lessons learned from a six-month instructional design internship program that uses an apprenticeship model grounded in continuous mentorship and authentic work.

Interns are embedded in active design workflows. Their tasks progress from supported participation to independent consultations and course development. This structure progression reflects a gradual release of responsibility and, with the commitment to real and meaningful work, positions the internship itself as an immersive learning environment. The approach aligns with internship and mentorship literature which suggests that participation in authentic work supports skill development and professional identity formation.

Drawing on program artifacts and mentor reflections, this session highlights practical strategies for scaffolding authentic work, supporting mentorship in online and remote environments, and aligning internship design with institutional needs. Interns in this model have consistently transitioned into professional roles, enabling instructional design teams to meet growing demands within and beyond the institution. Attendees will leave with actionable guidance for designing or refining internship models that create meaningful experiential learning while strengthening instructional design teams.

Learning Outcomes:

• Identify key elements of a mentorship-driven internship model.
• Analyze how authentic project work and mentorship are integrated within instructional design workflows to support experiential learning.
• Identify ways to adapt an internship or mentorship practice to better support experiential learning.

Katie Ostdiek, Instructional Designer, Bellevue University

Immersive virtual reality (VR) offers transformative potential for experiential learning, yet adoption is often hindered by limited institutional capacity. This presentation explores practical strategies for advancing institutional support of immersive learning, drawing on two mixed-methods case studies.

First, we examine how VR can foster diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). While VR provided a safe environment for exploring perspectives, participants faced challenges with physical adjustment and avatar representation, underscoring the need for human-centered design strategies.

Second, we highlight the integration of VR in business education. Through a collaboration with the Strategic Transformation in Education, Learning and Research (STELAR) Center, a VR coffee shop simulation was developed. This environment allowed students to safely practice cross-functional decision-making, resulting in higher engagement and deeper conceptual understanding.

A cross-functional VR Service Team has met regularly since August 2023 to operationalize VR and immersive learning support such as headset loaning and cleaning procedures, VR lab staffing needs, constructing and updating knowledge-base articles, evaluating software, and reducing general user friction for faculty and students. We will discuss how institutions can overcome challenges such as cost, accessibility, and technological resistance. We will share promising practices for evaluating impact, building cross-departmental collaborations, and creating sustainable frameworks to support faculty who are integrating VR into their curricula. Attendees will leave with actionable insights to enhance experiential learning.

Learning Outcomes:

• Describe evidence-based applications of VR in higher education.
• Identify key design principles and institutional strategies.
• Apply at least one promising practice for integrating VR into online learning.

Chientzu Candace Chou, Professor, University of St. Thomas

Seth Ketron, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of St. Thomas