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Innovation Garden

The iLRN Innovation Garden is the experimental and creative space of our network ecosystem. Where the Knowledge Tree provides structure and continuity, the Garden is dynamic and cyclical—growing new practices, prototypes, and insights for immersive learning.

🌱 The Soil: Multiple Fertile Frameworks

Innovation flourishes in rich soils, and iLRN blends several complementary approaches to create them:

  • Design-Based Research (DBR)
    Provides iterative cycles of design, implementation, reflection, and redesign—linking theory with practice.

  • Constructive Alignment (Biggs)
    Ensures that innovative projects connect learning outcomes, activities, and assessments, grounding experiments in pedagogical coherence.

  • Critical Design / Speculative Design
    Invites “what if?” thinking, encouraging designers to provoke reflection, imagine alternative futures, and test boundaries.

  • Agile & Lean Methods
    Add flexibility, responsiveness, and rapid prototyping to support experimentation at different scales.

Together, these frameworks provide a nutrient-rich soil: rigorous, reflective, creative, and adaptable.

🌿 Two Plots of the Garden

The Garden is cultivated in two complementary plots, each vital to the ecosystem:

👩‍🏫 Educators’ Plot: Implementing Experiences

  • Applies immersive learning in classrooms, museums, workplaces, and communities.

  • Seeds: lesson plans, teaching strategies, curriculum pilots.

  • Growth: trial implementations with learners, feedback cycles.

  • Bloom: exemplars showcased in the iLRN Repository and conferences.

🎨 Designers’ Plot: Creating Experiences

  • Focuses on designing and developing high-quality immersive environments and tools.

  • Seeds: prototypes, new platforms, innovative mechanics.

  • Growth: iteration, user testing, co-creation with educators.

  • Bloom: demonstrations in the Virtual Campus and publications as design cases.

The two plots ensure balance between implementation and creation, grounded in shared frameworks.

🌸 Seasonal Cycle of the Garden

  • Seeds (Idea Generation): New proposals are planted by members and working groups.

  • Growth (Development & Iteration): Frameworks like DBR and Agile nurture ideas into form.

  • Bloom (Showcase & Sharing): Projects are shared through conferences, webinars, and the Repository.

  • Renewal (Composting & Reflection): Lessons learned enrich the soil for the next cycle of innovation.

🌍 How We Use the Innovation Garden

  • As a framework-driven incubator for educators and designers alike.

  • As a training ground through iLEAD workshops and experimental collaborations.

  • As a showcase space in the Virtual Campus, bringing innovation into the public eye.

  • As a cycle of renewal, ensuring ideas evolve and sustain rather than stagnate.

🌟 Principle

The Innovation Garden flourishes because its soils are diverse—blending rigor (DBR), alignment (Constructive Alignment), creativity (Critical Design), and agility (Lean/Agile). With this foundation, and with Educators and Designers tending their plots, iLRN cultivates a living culture of experimentation and growth—advancing our mission to improve humanity and our world.

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