Co-designing for Immersive Learning Experiences in the Classroom

This research draws on a teacher-led innovation project to create digitally mediated learning experiences targeting the theme of “Health and Wellbeing”. Over a year, high school teachers, students and researchers co-designed three interdisciplinary learning activities involving immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) as well as social media. Each of the three learning activities represents flexible innovative learning ecologies targeting students’ deep learning. By adopting a design-ethnographic approach and social interaction analysis of the development process, the findings provide insight into the designed activities as reflective of broader learning ecologies. In addition, we discuss the potential of immersive technologies to support students’ talk and engagement in small groups. The study documents the development of new teaching and learning practices targeting societal level challenges.