Towards a Theory of Immersive Fluency Nicola Marae Allain, Ph. D. SUNY Empire State College Saratoga Springs, NY 12866 USA nicola.allain@esc.edu This is a presentation given during an Immersive Education Summit in Boston, June 2013. The presentation was accompanied by a full paper published in the Journal of Immersive Education. Abstract: The author discusses the theory and practice of immersion applied in the Master of Arts in Learning and Emerging Technologies (MALET) at SUNY Empire State College, which provides graduate students with immersion in virtual worlds learning as they acquire fluency across literacies. Learners co-create in collaborative virtual environments as designers of teaching and learning experiences. They participate in peer review in preparation for an open, juried showcase presented in virtual worlds, and design a complete learning environment for the Advanced Design Seminar. The fluency they acquire requires moving beyond literacies as they work in environments which foster a host of experiences leading to visual, digital, media, cultural, and critical fluencies. Immersive education requires participants to push beyond basic literacies. The act of immersion in itself includes the integration of a complex set of skills – habituation to being within an avatar embodiment, habile navigation, handling headsets, communication etiquette, orienting oneself to the environment, etc. In immersive learning situations, students are also asked to interact with, and create, a variety of digital media in interdisciplinary contexts. In collaborative settings, they must also coordinate the complex logistics of teamwork and content creation as they master the new environments. Regardless of entry literacy level, students and teachers in immersive environments quickly learn to integrate skills and literacies and apply them to emergent experiences. For example, in a Media Arts course in which students co-create interactive media works, they create work with mastery of digital literacy skills at the level of fluency. In fact, fluency in at least one of the media arts is a prerequisite for the course. They apply critical literacy to the peer review of works and visual, cultural, and information literacies to the development of content. The work culminates in a juried Media Arts Festival hosted in a virtual world. Presentation of their piece for the festival requires a high level integration of immersive fluency. The challenge of working fluently across a combination of literacies is, of course, a major hurdle in implementing immersive education. Even when students, particularly digital natives, embrace the complexities of the medium, faculty often struggle to develop the technical skills required to create immersive experiences. Their skills and knowledge sometimes fall short of the fluency required to succeed in these environments. The author includes a discussion of challenges and strategies to reach fluency.

3. “Fluency conveys a dynamism in the learning process
well-suited to highly mobile students who expect
constant technological change.
IT fluency, a concept that grew out of the National
Research Council’s FITness Report of 1999 (FITness is
the acronym for Fluency with Information
Technology).
This construct of IT fluency introduced the notion of
fluency itself, suggesting a dynamic, maturational
aspect to acquiring technology skills.”
Gibson 2007
IT Fluency

4. “The very unpredictability of the technology
environment suggests that the fluency paradigm
better addresses the need to conceive of the student
as an active agent in his or her own learning.
The integration of learning and student experience
demands a new approach to programmatic integration
as well.”
Gibson 2007
Fluency

5. The challenge of working fluently across a
combination of literacies is a major hurdle in
implementing immersive education.
Even when students, particularly digital natives,
embrace the complexities of the medium, faculty
often struggle to develop the technical skills required
to create immersive experiences.
Their skills and knowledge sometimes fall short of
the fluency required to succeed in these
environments.
Literacy Falls Short

6. Learners co-create in collaborative virtual
environments as designers of teaching and learning
experiences.
They participate in peer review in preparation for an
open, juried showcase presented in virtual worlds,
and design a complete learning environment for the
Advanced Design Seminar.
The fluency they acquire requires moving beyond
literacies as they work in environments which foster
a host of experiences leading to visual, digital,
media, cultural, and critical fluencies.
MALET - Master of Arts in Learning and
Emerging Technologies

7. Initial Immersion

8. Learning Integration

9. Wankel and Blessinger propose the following application
benefits to learner-centered immersive environments:
• Intragroup and intergroup dialogue and collaboration in a
multiplicity of complex situations and contexts
• Immediacy, a sense of belonging, and group cohesiveness,
which fosters shared identity and culture
• Mediation to facilitate learning tasks, thereby making
learning more enjoyable and interesting
• The development of multiple perspectives apersonal
reflection and through the development of ethical reasoning
and multiple modes of inquiry though role play and skills,
and
• Individualized learning that is more personally meaningful to
each student and more authentic and conducive to how
today’s students experience learning in their real life-worlds.
Immersive Environments

10. requires participants to push beyond basic literacies.
The act of immersion in itself includes the integration
of a complex set of skills – habituation to being
within an avatar embodiment, habile navigation,
handling headsets, communication etiquette,
orienting oneself to the environment, etc.
In immersive learning situations, students are also
asked to interact with, and create, a variety of digital
media in interdisciplinary contexts. In collaborative
settings, they must also coordinate the complex
logistics of teamwork and content creation as they
master the new environments.
Immersive Education

11. 1. Consider the social, ethical and legal impacts of new
technologies on our lives, individually and collectively.
2. Explore the multiple, unfolding political and economic
impacts of digital media as a transformative agent in the
global civic and market arenas.
3. Develop an understanding of how people learn in
technology-mediated environments.
4. Examine and evaluate learning that occurs in technology
mediated environments, and the impact of digital tools,
resources and pedagogical methods in these settings.
5. Acquire the skills and capacity to identify, employ and
evaluate technologically supported tools and
methodologies.
6. Conduct original research projects both individually and
in collaborative faculty-student teams in order to expand
knowledge in the field.
MALET Program Goals

12. MALET Curriculum
Term 1 Core Courses Term 2 Core Courses Term 3 Core Courses
Learning with Emerging
Technologies: Theory and
Practice
Design of Online Learning
Environments
Evaluating Learning In
Participatory Learning
Environments
New Media and New
Literacies
Social and Ethical Issues
in the Digital Era
Advanced Design
Seminar: Portfolio Project
Term 1 Term 2 Term 3
Elective Elective Pro-Seminar
Elective Elective Research or Capstone
Project
Table 2: YEAR 2 Electives and Research Seminars
Table 2: YEAR 1 Core Courses

13. MALET Curriculum
Table 3: Elective Types
Program Courses Other Courses Practicum
• Game Based Learning • Individualized Studies Research
• Identities and
Communities in
Immersive Environments
• Advanced Program
Planning/Systems
Thinking
• Selections from other graduate
programs:
MBA, MA in Social Policy,
MLA (liberal studies),
MAT (teaching),
MAAL (adult learning)
Design
Teaching
• Advanced Evaluation and
Analytics
• Selections from certificate
programs,
• Computers, Ethics and
Society
including new media and digital
performance technologies

14. In this final core course of the MALET Program, students
continue to deepen their knowledge of theories and practices
pertaining to instructional design and emerging
technologies. They create a body of work that reflects the
ability to integrate theory and skills of design and development,
learning principles, and assessment methods. This knowledge
and skill is demonstrated in the creation of a comprehensive
multimedia project for their ePortfolio or their professional work
environment. This project should demonstrate the student’s
growth as a specialist in emerging technologies as well as
incorporate their own past skills, knowledge, and/or interests
on their chosen topic. Personal reflection is used to self-
evaluate their own evidence of learning and to make deeper
connections between the concepts learned in the other courses.
Advanced Design Seminar Part 1

15. Students incorporate knowledge of instructional methods,
learning theories and evaluation techniques with principles of
instructional design and multimedia development to create a
web-based or instructional design project. Students might
choose to explore topics such as: how to apply learning theories
to instructional design and assessment models; how to
experiment with new technology tools to address a context-
specific problem; how to implement, manage and evaluate a
design project; how to analyze the effectiveness of a project
designed using a particular model but used in different
educational settings. Program participants take part in a two-
day immersive juried Design Showcase, where they present
their design portfolios, and join in peer review and feedback
discussions.
Advanced Design Seminar Part 2

16. Creative Collaboration

17. Regardless of entry literacy level, students and
teachers in immersive environments quickly learn to
integrate skills and literacies and apply them to
emergent experiences. They:
• create work with mastery of digital literacy skills at
the level of fluency
• apply critical literacy to the peer review of works
and
• visual, cultural, and information literacies to the
development of content
• present their final work in a juried festival or
showcase held in a virtual world, which requires
immersive fluency.
Becoming Fluent

18. This preliminary exploration a theory of immersive
fluency attempts to demonstrate that a carefully
designed program built to progressive move
students from an introductory literacy level to
fluency in immersive technologies (and related skills,
knowledge and competencies). Whereas students
entering the program may have little or no
experience in the immersive environment,
scaffolding, peer support, and total immersion in
complex, collaborative virtual spaces provide them
with the a gradual acquisition of immersive fluency.
Conclusion

19. Advanced Design Seminar: Portfolio Project . 2012. Official Course Description. Saratoga Springs, NY: SUNY
Empire State College.
Allain, Nicola Marae. 2012. Advanced Design Seminar: Portfolio Project . Online course documents.,
Saratoga Springs, NY: SUNY Empire State College.
Gal, D. et al. 2011. Master of Arts in Learning and Emerging Technologies Full Program Proposal. Saratoga
Springs, NY: SUNY Empire State College.
Gibson, Craig. 2007. "Information Literacy and IT Fluency." Reference & User Services Quarterly 46, no. 3:
23-59.
Hobbs, R. 2010. Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action. The Aspen Institute Communications and
Society Program. Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute.spen Institute.
Jenkins, Henry. 2009. Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st
century. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Johnson, L., Adams Becker, S., Cummins, M., Estrada, V., Freeman, A., and Ludgate, H. 2013. NMC
Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.
T. Mackey, T. Jacobson. Reframing Information Literacy as a Metaliteracy. College & Research Libraries
[serial online]. January 2011;72(1):62-78.
National Research Council (U.S.). 1999. Being fluent with information technology. Washington: National
Academy Press.
Nelson, Brian C., and Benjamin E. Erlandson. 2012. Design for learning in virtual worlds. New York:
Routledge.
Wankel, Charles, and Patrick Blessinger. 2012. Increasing student engagement and retention using
immersive interfaces: virtual worlds, gaming, and stimulation. Bingley: Emerald.
References

20. Nicola Marae Allain, Ph. D.,
Faculty/Mentor & Academic Area Coordinator,
Humanities/Digital Media
Core Faculty, Master of Arts in Learning &
Emerging Technologies
Center for Distance Learning,
Empire State College,
State University of New York
nicola.allain@esc.edu
website: http://nicolamarae.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Nicola_Marae
Towards a Theory of Immersive Fluency by Nicola Marae Allain, PhD is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
3.0 Unported License.
Thank You!