About the iLRN Illuminators’ Forum

The iLRN Illuminators Forum is a global gathering place for researchers, educators, designers, and practitioners who interpret emerging signals in immersive learning and XR.”

The iLRN Illuminators’ Forum

This iLRN Forum is the conversational heart of the iLRN Searchlight ecosystem and drives persistent conversation and activity on the emerging edge of innovation in our field. It is where people who care about immersive learning come together to compare what they are seeing, make sense of rapid change, and translate scattered signals into grounded insights that serve the global community.

Purpose and Function

The Illuminators’ Forum exists to:

• Create a shared interpretive space for emerging signals in XR and immersive learning across regions, sectors, and platforms.
• Support sensemaking by inviting participants to connect weak signals, strong trends, partnerships, and local experiments to broader trajectories.
• Bridge practice and scholarship, linking real-world pilots and deployments with research findings and theoretical frames.
• Feed the iLRN knowledge infrastructure, especially the State of XR & Immersive Learning effort, the iLRN Knowledge Tree, and the Innovation Garden.

So, the Forum is not only about collecting links or news. It is about thinking together—turning raw information into poignant context with current insights that can guide design, research, teaching, policy, and investment.

Who Are the “Illuminators”?

“Illuminators” are any iLRN community members who actively help others see more clearly:

• Researchers who connect new work to prior literature, methods, and theory.
• Educators and instructional designers who translate signals into implications for classrooms, training, and informal learning.
• Designers, developers, and technologists who understand the technical underpinnings and constraints of XR systems.
• Artists, storytellers, and cultural leaders who can speak to meaning, ethics, and affective dimensions of immersive experiences.
• Community stewards and chapter leads who bring regional or Indigenous perspectives into view.
• Industry or sector leaders with a genuine interest in helping the community.
• University and Library/Museum Administrators, indigenous leaders, policymakers and nonprofit organizations or independent advocates who can put a spotlight on regional issues and cultural contexts and perspectives.

No formal title is required. Anyone who contributes thoughtfully to interpreting what the Searchlight reveals is, in practice, an Illuminator.

How the Illuminators’ Forum Fits the iLRN Ecosystem

Within the broader iLRN architecture, the relationships can be described as:

• The Searchlight – Methods and tools for environmental scanning (news, research, projects, partnerships, indicators).
• The iLRN Illuminators’ Forum – The people who gather to reflect on what the Searchlight finds and discuss what it might mean.
• The Immersion Spotlight – The specific topics, signals, or cases that receive focused attention in public webinars, posts, and written briefs.

The Illuminators’ Forum sits between collection and communication. It is the interpretive middle layer that keeps the wider community from either drowning in relentless oncoming raw information or relying solely on a few editorial voices.

Activities and Formats

The iLRN Illuminators’ Forum can encompass multiple, complementary formats, such as:

• Synchronous discussions
  
• Regular Zoom or Frame VR sessions where participants review selected signals, share perspectives, and identify cross-cutting themes.
• Segment(s) within public-facing webinars (e.g., “Illuminators’ Round” or “What we’re seeing now”).
  
• Asynchronous exchanges
  
• Dedicated channels or threads in Discord / forums where members post signals (articles, projects, announcements) and add short interpretations or questions.
• Periodic prompts (e.g., “What are you seeing in accessibility this month?”) to catalyze contributions.
  
• Written and curated outputs
  
• Short “Illuminators’ Notes” summarizing what has emerged from recent conversations.
• Contributions to Codex pages, Knowledge Tree branches, and State of XR regional/environmental scans.
  

Formats should stay lightweight and repeatable, emphasizing clarity and reuse rather than volume.

Participation Pathways

To help members orient themselves, participation can be thought of in three levels:

1. Signal Sharers
   
• Bring forward news items, articles, projects, or local initiatives.
• Add brief context: where it’s from, why it matters, and what questions it raises.
  
2. Interpreters
   
• Connect signals to existing research, frameworks, or ongoing projects.
• Identify patterns, tensions, or divergences across regions and sectors.
  
3. Synthesis Stewards
   
• Help gather threads from discussions into short, reusable summaries for the Codex, State of XR efforts, or branch-specific pages.
  

Individuals may move between these roles depending on time, expertise, and interest. The Forum’s structure should remain hospitable to light-touch participation while still enabling deeper involvement.

Roles and Light-Structure Governance

Without becoming bureaucratic, the Illuminators’ Forum benefits from a few clear, named roles:

• Forum Conveners 
  
• Curate a manageable set of signals for live sessions.
• Propose focus areas (e.g., accessibility, Indigenous XR, workforce training, environmental sciences).
• Ensure regional and disciplinary diversity in the conversation.
  
• Discussion Hosts / Moderators
  
• Facilitate sessions so that multiple voices are heard.
• Keep discussions anchored in evidence and lived practice, while welcoming speculative futures thinking.
• Track time and gently keep the conversation on theme.
  
• Recorders / Synthesis Leads
  
• Capture key insights, disagreements, and questions.
• Produce concise notes that can be dropped into the Codex, scan logs, or Spotlight content.
  
• Regional / Chapter Liaisons
  
• Bring in perspectives and signals from specific Continental regions, chapters, or communities (e.g., Indigenous-led projects, language-specific ecosystems).
  

These roles do not need to be rigid; they can intertwine, rotate and be shared by volunteers who understand iLRN’s values and commitments.

Working Principles and Norms

The iLRN Illuminators’ Forum:

• Values multi-perspectival insight. Technical, pedagogical, artistic, Indigenous, and regional lenses are all recognized as essential.
• Distinguishes between signal and certainty. Participants are invited to surface weak or ambiguous signals, clearly labeled as such, without treating them as predictions or faits accomplis.
• Grounds interpretation in evidence where possible. Links to research, case data, and lived experience are encouraged, while leaving room for reflective, speculative thinking.
• Practices epistemic humility. No one person or institution “owns” the future of immersive learning; the Forum is a place to ask better questions rather than claim final answers.
• Strives for accessibility and inclusion. This includes attention to language, time zones, bandwidth, and cultural contexts, as well as openness to early-career participants and students.

These norms help keep the Forum constructive, rigorous, and welcoming.

Outputs and How They Are Used

Insights and materials from the Illuminators’ Forum can flow into:

• The State of XR & Immersive Learning environmental scans, providing grounded examples, trends, and tensions by region and application domain.
• Knowledge Tree branches, where signals are tagged and connected to relevant foundations, methods, and application areas.
• The Innovation Garden (iLEAD), informing design patterns, practice guidelines, tutorials, and examples.
• Spotlight content, including short briefs, case highlights, or thematic sessions that bring curated trends to a broader public.

The aim is that discussions not remain ephemeral: they should leave a trail of reusable, citable artifacts that can support both practice and scholarship.

Example Prompts for Illuminators

To keep the Forum focused and generative, conveners may use prompts such as:

• “What are you seeing now in accessibility for immersive learning that feels qualitatively new or different?”
• “Which partnerships or alliances in the last quarter might reshape the landscape in your region?”
• “Where are you seeing immersive learning applied to heritage, human rights, or difficult histories, and what tensions does that raise?”
• “What technical developments (hardware, software, standards) are likely to change what’s feasible in teaching and training within the next 2–3 years?”

These prompts help participants move from isolated links toward shared interpretation and comparative analysis.

This Codex entry serves as:

• An orientation document for new participants in the iLRN Illuminators’ Forum.
• A reference page for conveners, moderators, and chapter leads when planning sessions or asynchronous activities.
• A linkable explanation for partners, sponsors, or institutional stakeholders who want to understand how iLRN is approaching environmental scanning and futures-oriented dialogue.