2017 3rd International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network (iLRN) - Full and Short papers

The third annual iLRN conference was held this year, hosted at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, one of the oldest universities in the world, dating from 1290, just one century after the founding of the Portuguese nation. Situated in the heart of the historic city of Coimbra, the university is poised amidst a fusion of new and old, as newer technology corporations and non-profits vie for prominence with historic architecture and tourism attractions. It is a setting where we hope to better define “immersion” and what that means across our connected interdisciplinary focus. We hope to highlight what “immersive” learning means to a number of focused disciplinary areas. We hope to immerse ourselves in a number of designed experiences to compare and contrast what capabilities they bring – and what things they disallow or take away.

This year’s special focus was “Honoring Tradition, Immersed in the Future.” Set at the nexus between old and new, with ancient physical structures mixed among modern architectural marvels, this year’s conference concentrated on the fusion between old and new in immersive learning. Creating immersive experiences is becoming easier every day, but doing it well so that people learn effectively is much harder. People engaged in the production of high-quality immersive learning experiences, thus, must be a specialist in one or more disciplines with the ability to appreciate and work effectively from the lens of other specialties. Some of these specialists will be from “old” professions, such as writers, teachers, thespians, attorneys, and sports professionals, while others will be from newer occupations such as computer coders, 3D graphic designers, and educational technologists. Creating effective learning experiences using immersive technologies requires the coordination of both “old” and “new” types of special expertise and effort. Old and new must work together.

As such, this conference is focused on providing opportunities for individuals from a wide variety of areas to share their information across the fields involved with the research, development, implementation, practical experiences, and business of immersive learning. The conference format was designed to gather submissions to the main track focusing on the conference theme, while the six special tracks, workshops, and two publication outlets were planned to draw more interest from diverse communities of scholars and practitioners based on discipline, methodology, or technology type.

Like the inaugural conference, iLRN 2017 was an important forum for immersive learning research. The call for papers resulted in a total of 76 submissions from around the world. Every submission underwent rigorous review by at least two members of the Program Committee to keep high scientific and quality standards. The editorial board decided, based on the reviewers’ comments, to accept 17 full papers and four short papers for the proceedings, which is an acceptance rate of 27%. The full papers are arranged into two parts in the proceedings, the main track and the special tracks. The accepted papers’ authors are from: Austria, Brazil, China, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Norway, UK, Portugal, and USA (Arkansas, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio).

We would like to thank all who contributed to the success of this conference, in particular the members of the iLRN committee (and the additional reviewers) for carefully reviewing the contributions and selecting a high-quality program.

This Academic Full and Short Papers Proceedings volume is part of the Academic Track and is published by Springer.

To access the full documents please visit Springer's website: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-60633-0.

Editors

• Dennis Beck, University of Arkansas, USA
• Colin Allison,University of St Andrews, UK
• Leonel Morgado, Universidade Aberta, Portugal
• Johanna Pirker, Graz University of Technology, Austria
• Foaad Khosmood, California Polytechnic State University, USA
• Jonathon Richter, iLRN President and CEO, USA
• Christian Gütl, Graz University of Technology, Austria

ISBN 978-3-319-60633-0

Copyright ©2017 - Springer. For reprints and permissions policies please visit Springer's website.

The papers in this publication reflect the authors' opinions. Their inclusion in this publication does not necessarily constitute endorsement by the editors or the Immersive Learning Research Network.

To cite this volume please use the recommended format:

Beck, D., Allison, C., Morgado, L., Pirker, J., Khosmood, F., Richter, J., & Gütl, C. (Eds.) (2017). Immersive Learning Research Network. Proceedings of 3th International Conference, iLRN 2017, Coimbra, Portugal, June 26-29, 2017. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-60633-0

For more information on the Academic Proceedings please visit https://publications.immersivelrn.org/index.php/academic.

For more information on the Practitioner Proceedings please visit https://publications.immersivelrn.org/index.php/practitioner.