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3. Strategic Purpose and Intended Outcomes

The iLEAD Innovation Garden exists to strengthen immersive learning practice across global contexts and to support the growth of the immersive learning discipline through applied experimentation, community engagement, and evidence-informed design. This page defines the strategic intent of the Garden and the outcomes it is structured to achieve within the iLRN ecosystem.

3.1 Core Strategic Purpose

The Innovation Garden is designed to function as iLRN’s practice-driven innovation ecosystem, providing an accessible environment for practitioners, designers, educators, students, and creative technologists to:

  • Develop immersive learning experiences across platforms and modalities

  • Explore applied uses of XR and multimodal tools

  • Test, refine, and adapt emerging design patterns

  • Share practical methods, workflows, and instructional strategies

  • Generate practice-based evidence that supports the evolution of the field

  • Build community capacity through shared learning and repeatable templates

The Garden anchors iLRN’s commitment to nurturing both individual creativity and collective advancement in immersive learning design.

3.2 How the Garden Supports iLRN’s Mission

Within the broader mission of iLRN, the Garden contributes to:

  • Community democratization by lowering barriers to participation in immersive learning design

  • Professional development through structured experiences, guided explorations, and peer mentoring

  • Global capacity building across educational, cultural, workforce, and informal learning sectors

  • Applied research readiness by cultivating prototypes and methods that can mature into scholarly contributions

  • Innovation leadership through alignment with trends and signals surfaced by the Searchlight

  • Network cohesion by offering year-round activities that connect practitioners to scholars, designers, and regional chapters

This strategic orientation supports iLRN’s long-term goal of positioning immersive learning as a recognized global discipline.

3.3 Intended Outcomes for Practitioners and Contributors

The Garden aims to generate clear, actionable outcomes for its participants:

  • Increased confidence in using immersive tools and platforms

  • Skill development in design-based research, prototyping, and learning experience design

  • Practical insight into cross-platform decision-making and multimodal literacies

  • Documented examples and showcases that can support career advancement

  • Integration into global networks of practice and interdisciplinary collaboration

  • Opportunities to contribute workshop proposals, demos, and practitioner papers to the annual iLRN conference

These outcomes support sustained engagement and the growth of a vibrant practice community.

3.4 Intended Outcomes for the Immersive Learning Discipline

At the field level, the Garden contributes:

  • Evidence-informed design patterns that strengthen Book B (Design Patterns & Standards)

  • Practice-based case examples that enrich the Knowledge Tree

  • Validated prototypes ready for adaptation, research, or scaling

  • Design methods and templates that enable frugal, repeatable innovation

  • Global exemplars that illustrate the evolving state of immersive learning practice

  • Inputs to the Immersive Futures Report, informed by year-round Garden activity

The Garden thus acts as a continuous pipeline of insights, methods, and creative outputs that reinforce disciplinary growth.

3.5 Strategic Benefits to the Annual iLRN Conference

The Innovation Garden directly supports conference excellence through:

  • A consistent pipeline of practitioner proposals

  • Well-prepared submissions grounded in shared methods and templates

  • Showcases and demos aligned with the Knowledge Tree branches

  • Cross-platform coverage informed by Guided Adventures

  • Authentic examples of innovative immersive practices across global contexts

This creates a more robust and diverse iLEAD stream while offering contributors a clear annual pathway from idea to presentation.

3.6 Long-Term Vision

The long-term vision for the Innovation Garden is to become a globally recognized, practice-based innovation ecosystem that:

  • Serves as a catalyst for ethical and human-centered immersive learning

  • Connects international communities through shared creative exploration

  • Supports scalable frugal innovation in education, culture, medicine, workforce training, and community development

  • Anchors immersive learning as a multidisciplinary, evidence-driven discipline

  • Sustains year-round engagement with the iLRN community, grounded in collaboration, curiosity, and creative experimentation

Through this vision, the Garden becomes a strategic asset that strengthens the immersive learning discipline and supports iLRN’s global impact.

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