9. How Practice Feeds the Knowledge Tree

The Innovation Garden plays a central role in generating the practical insights, design approaches, and experiential examples that strengthen the immersive learning discipline. This page explains how Garden activities evolve into contributions to the iLRN Knowledge Tree and the broader scholarly ecosystem. Such experimentation and practice using new and emerging technologies applied to meaningful learning gains is vital to our growing field.

9.1 Practice as a Source of Disciplinary Growth

Immersive learning is an emerging field defined not only by scientific theory and research but by applied creativity, experimentation, and reflective design. The Innovation Garden serves as the network’s practice-based engine—where methods, prototypes, and experiential learning flows are developed, tested, and refined.

Through structured activities such as Garden Pods, Guided Virtual Adventures, Toolshed Sessions, and Maker Panels, practitioners create:

Prototypes and experiential scenes
Platform workflows and technical approaches
Instructional strategies suited to immersive modalities
Reflective insights about learning design
Early evidence of impact and learner engagement

These outputs become the raw material for deeper scholarly work.

9.2 How Garden Outputs Become “Fruit” for the Knowledge Tree

Once refined, Garden outputs move into more formal structures within iLRN. Typical pathways include:

Design Patterns

Practical insights and recurring solutions identified through Garden work are distilled into formal design patterns documented in Book B.

Case Examples & Practice Narratives

In-depth descriptions of immersive learning experiences become illustrative cases that inform teaching, research, and conference sessions.

Templates & Reusable Workflows

Step-by-step guides, platform-specific workflows, and prototypes evolve into reusable resources that can be adopted across the network.

Tutorials and Demonstrations

Walkthroughs and ToolShed Sessions often lead to clear, replicable guides that strengthen the Knowledge Tree’s applied foundations.

Repository-Ready Contributions

High-quality Garden outputs are added to the iLRN Repository of Immersive Learning Experiences—making them accessible and citable within the global community.

These contributions become “fruit hanging from the Tree”—visible, interpretable, and useful for scholars, practitioners, and students.

9.3 How the Knowledge Tree Strengthens Practice

The relationship is reciprocal. As Garden outputs inform the Knowledge Tree, the Tree provides:

Conceptual grounding for new Garden experiments
Scholarly frameworks and models to test through practice
Taxonomies, patterns, and standards that improve design quality
Shared language that supports collaboration
Research-informed insights for program design

This feedback loop ensures that the Garden does not drift into disconnected experimentation but remains aligned with and reinforced by the evolving discipline.

9.4 Practice → Evidence → Scholarship: The Development Pathway

The pathway from idea to evidence-informed contribution generally follows these steps:

Exploration
Early ideas take shape during Walkthroughs, Adventures, and informal co-creation.
Experimentation
Prototypes and early-stage concepts are showcased in Garden Pods or ToolShed Sessions.
Reflection & Refinement
Contributors gather feedback, adjust design choices, and develop clearer articulation of goals and outcomes.
Documentation
Templates, workflows, or case examples are created to formalize learning and methods.
Integration
Refined contributions enter the Knowledge Tree, the iLEAD conference stream, or the Repository.
Scholarly Development
Some projects evolve further into practitioner papers, research studies, or emerging scholarly inquiries.

This pathway preserves the creative spirit of the Garden while ensuring a meaningful contribution to the broader field.

9.5 Why This Relationship Matters

By connecting practice and scholarship, the Innovation Garden:

Strengthens the immersive learning discipline with lived examples
Ensures the Knowledge Tree remains evidence-informed and practitioner-rich
Provides a pipeline of new ideas for research, standards, and evaluation models
Enables global practitioners to contribute beyond their local context
Sustains iLRN as a community where creativity and scholarship evolve together

This integration supports the network’s long-term mission of building an open, globally relevant, and human-centered immersive learning field.