iLRN2024 Special Track
Literacy Equity and Immersive Learning (LE/IL)

Special Track Chairs

• Ken Bigger, Director of Thought Leadership, Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy (KT Board Member)
• Stephanie Moore, University of New Mexico (former Dollar General/BBF Research Fellow on Adult EdTech) 
• Dennis Beck, University of Arkansas, iLRN

Description

“Every technology that we have in a capitalist system exacerbates inequality.” - Julian Suvalescu (citation here, 23:05)

The Literacy Equity and Immersive Learning track will, in part, seek to test if Suvalescu’s claim is necessarily true, and whether this unevenly catalytic effect of technology can be effectively counteracted or ameliorated in service to expanding access to multiple literacies for learners of all ages. In contemplating “Tech for Good,” we’re called to explore assumptions about human agency as well as evaluate the vision of human flourishing immersive learning tools foster and/or embody. This track will address some of these questions directly, applying values discourse to questions of practical implementation and design.

For instance, is there something fundamentally amiss with design strategies built on behaviorist assumptions? Is there something fundamentally amiss with technologies designed for but not with learners? How do the answers to these questions influence our choices with regard to gamification and game-based learning? Furthermore, how do we situate the resource-intensive demands of digitally mediated immersive learning within the broader context of educational inequality for adults and kids?

Suggested topics

1. Strategies to counteract immersive learning technology’s potential to exacerbate educational inequality
2. Incorporating multiple literacies in immersive learning–embracing non-traditional competency building
3. Ethics of design (e.g., nothing about us without us); countering “tech solutionism”
4. Issues of equitable resource deployment in virtual learning
5. Civic fluency and assumptions about human agency in immersive learning design (e.g. behaviorist models vs free will models; theory of mind)
6. Addressing anthropogogical (i.e., relating to the method and practice of teaching humans, regardless of age) and infrastructure differences in virtual learning for children and adults

Back to the iLRN2024 Call for Papers