Transmedia for Immersive Learning: The Design and Study of Alternate and Augmented Reality Play Experiences

Abstract

Henry Jenkins popularized the term transmedia storytelling, emphasizing the role of narrative as a learning support structure. Various authors have noted stories function as important cognitive events, collected to meaningfully synthesize information, knowledge, context, and emotion in a concise delivery platform. Transmedia storytelling and learning game play involves systematically distributing narrative elements, communicated across multiple delivery channels to create an integrated experience. Related literacies include play, performance, simulation, distributed cognition, collective intelligence, and negotiation, akin to what present in other immersive learning games. When used in education, transmedia learning involves cross-platform storytelling and play experiences that make cognitive connections to content, language, and media affordances. This talk will discuss what immersive transmedia is and how it has been applied to support learning multiple forms of literacy through matches among. It will explain the rapid design and development approaches taken over the years to design alternate, augmented reality, and transmedia learning experiences in The Door, Broken Window, Villainous, and others. Further, he will talk about how we can validly study these complex, distributed learning experiences with the goal of understanding how they can support higher order thinking and modern digital literacies.