Locating a clear and obvious body of literature that names, describes, and defines immersion as a pedagogy has been challenging. Immersion is only occasionally mentioned explicitly in many sources and often only in a handful of areas of higher education…

Over the course of the last year, I have collected 54 interviews with higher education faculty and staff, from fifteen separate institutions, all of whom are involved with immersive learning in some capacity. I haven’t done this work alone; I…

We can thank George Kuh and colleagues at the Association of American Colleges & Universities for initially proposing the idea of “high-impact practices” (HIPs) as exemplar components of a college student’s learning experience in the AA&U publication, High-Impact Educational Practices: What…

Interviewing teaching faculty about the pedagogies they use in their courses has been one of my primary methods of collecting data for my exploration of immersive learning practices in higher education. With each interview, I learn more about the range…

I was on sabbatical in the spring semester of 2019 and thus escaped much of the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic that affected students and teachers alike at Elon University and most other institutions of higher education. While my colleagues…

Like many higher education institutions, Elon University is many things, including a place of opportunity and possibility. Since my last blog post, I was selected to serve as Elon’s next Faculty Fellow for Service-Learning and Community Engagement (SL-CE). By itself,…

In short order, I’ll have collected close to 25 interviews with colleagues who are involved in some way with immersive learning. Most of the interviews are with Elon faculty and staff, but a few are from colleagues at other institutions….

The coronavirus pandemic has slowed, but not stopped, my investigation of immersive learning practices in higher education. In particular, my plans to conduct in-person interviews of university teaching faculty about their experiences with immersive learning have been delayed. However, due…

Attempting to fully define the characteristics of immersive learning is a distinct challenge. What pedagogies count and which ones don’t? Is there a specific line in the sand that demarcates what is and isn’t immersive learning, and if so, where…

As part of my exploration of pedagogies that constitute immersive learning, it is hard to ignore Elon University’s robust use of a specific curricular structure: our winter term. Every January at Elon, students can elect to enroll in a single,…