Immersive Learning Experience
Experience it for yourself!
What is the Immersive Learning Experience?
The Immersive Learning Experience is a dynamic professional learning opportunity designed to bridge the gap between theory and practice in authentic teaching strategies such as service-learning, project-based learning, inquiry, and design thinking. While educators recognize the value of these approaches, many have had little personal experience with them, making effective implementation challenging. This experience places teachers and administrators in the role of learners, allowing them to engage personally in selected phases of authentic learning—Investigation, Preparation/Planning, Action/Implementation, Reflection, and Demonstration/Celebration. By experiencing the engagement and empowerment these strategies foster, participants gain both the emotional connection and practical foundation needed to begin to integrate them into their own classrooms and schools. The Immersive Experience transforms professional development into an active, participatory process, ensuring that educators are not just learning about authentic instruction but truly experiencing it.
Objectives
Experience Authentic Learning Firsthand
Educators will actively engage in immersive learning experiences that mirror student-centered strategies such as service-learning, project-based learning, inquiry, and design thinking which cultivate agency, promote collaboration, and engage skills and dispositions needed for future success.
Develop Emotional and Practical Connections
Participants will move through the selected phases of authentic learning to build both intellectual understanding and emotional investment in these approaches.
Empower Educators for Implementation
By experiencing the engagement and impact of these strategies themselves, teachers and administrators will gain the confidence, insights, and foundational skills necessary to begin to integrate authentic learning into their classrooms and schools.
Gain a Deeper Understanding of the Benefits of Authentic Learning
Through experiencing what students experience via the Immersive Experience, educators will understand how this approach strengthens attainment of academic standards, increases career skills, develops deeper self-awareness, and empowers students to engage not only in their own learning but also in contributing to the world around them.
The Immersive Learning Experience is oriented toward both teachers and administrators. It can be customized for the size of your group and will explore relevant and meaningful content.
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Approach
Our organization’s approach to the Immersive Learning Experience is rooted in authenticity, collaboration, and long-term impact. We believe in co-creating meaningful experiences for both staff and students, ensuring that learning is not only engaging but also deeply relevant. By promoting shared leadership, we empower educators to take ownership of their growth while fostering a culture of collaboration. Our customized approach allows us to uncover a shared vision that aligns with each school’s unique needs, building systems of support that sustain change beyond a single experience. Through reflection and authentic learning, we help educators reconnect with the joy of teaching, reigniting their passion and purpose in ways that inspire both their practice and their students.
Why this approach matters...
John Hattie’s Visible Learning Sequel (2023) research indicates the authentic learning models (e.g., service-learning) promote, on average, 1.5 years worth of learning in a year’s worth of teaching. The take-aways? Authentic learning closes gaps, fosters deeper learning, and ensures emotionally-engaged learners. Learners see themselves in the curriculum, and they learn a lot!
Authentic learning is rooted in what motivates all humans—competence or confidence, autonomy and agency, and human connections (Ryan & Deci, 2017). That’s why authentic learning works for both learning and engagement. When we’re engaged, we feel we have equity in the learning, and when there’s equity, there’s agency. Authentic learning de-centers the long-standing approach of learning being “done” to students, where there are lots of have-to’s and the academic goals are the only ones that matter, and begins empowering students to be curious, creative, collaborative, and inspired!
