Transformation through Immersive Learning
In simple terms a transformative experience changes us in a way that matters. There are many people who have described their participation in immersive learning experiences as being transformational, but is this an inherent part of the experience design or just a welcome but unintended side-effect?
To understand transformation through immersive learning we must look deeper at transformational experiences. We must then see if their design and realisation map to immersive learning contexts. In case you are new to the concept of immersive learning then our definition is as follows.
The use of immersive techniques such as storytelling, agency, gamification and puzzles to facilitate effective learning.
If we are looking for wisdom on the subject of transformational experiences then where better to begin than with the renowned “experience visionary” and WXO member Joe Pine. He is one of the foremost authorities on the subject of transformational experiences and how to create one.
Joe talks about transformational experiences being made up of three key stages. As we’ll see there is a lot that sits behind each of these stages, but we can briefly summarise them as follows.
Stage 1: Diagnosis. Understand who the audience for our experience are and what they aspire to.
Stage 2: Experiences. Deliver the experience to our audience taking them on a journey of transformation.
Stage 3: Follow-Through. Embed the change our audience experienced on their journey, to ensure they truly are transformative and not simply transient.
In our context the audience is our learner and the experience is whatever we create to realise their learning goals. So to understand if an immersive learning experience can be transformational we should see if it also follows these three stages.
Start with Why
Before we dive into the detail of the three stages, we need to pause and ask why we want our immersive learning experience to be transformational in the first place.
There are lots of benefits to transformation, but in the context of learning and development there is one that is clear. To see it we should ask one question, why do we want to learn? The answer is that we want to change and develop in a positive way. In other words, to transform ourselves to be able to achieve or experience something new. We could therefore argue that learning is simply the tool that enables our own transformation. So maybe transformation in our immersive context is just about embedding the learning into an end-to-end process.
This all sounds like a good reason to make our immersive learning experiences transformational, so how do those three stages help us?
Stage 1: Diagnosis
The purpose of any immersive learning experience is to stimulate positive change in our learner. Normally this is as a result of wanting to change a negative outcome that is being manifested in the workplace. Very rarely does the root cause of the problem reveal itself immediately, so we typically need to complete a diagnosis. This will involve a form of root cause analysis, for example, using the five whys.
If we complete our diagnosis effectively we will find the root cause of the issue that needs addressing. Once this is known we can identify an action or more usually a change that needs to occur to address it. This might be getting the learner to acquire additional knowledge, to trigger behaviours that will benefit them or maybe to stop a certain activity or behaviour. This will be our learning outcome and is the change we need to realise with the learner.
The catch with all this is that we need to have completed our diagnosis successfully if we are going to achieve the transformation that will solve the right problem.
It should therefore be very clear that if we skip this stage, or we don’t execute it correctly then everything we do after it might be futile. When we misdiagnose, or solve what initially appears to be the problem, we usually end up trying to solve the wrong problem. If we don’t address the correct root cause, we won’t see a positive outcome at the end.
Stage 2: Experiences
This stage is by definition at the core of an immersive learning experience. Its where we take the individual or team on the journey needed to achieve the desired learning outcome.
As in any other immersive experience there are key components that need to be present for this to be effective. The design of our experience must be guided by our outcomes. In immersive learning it will be narrative driven, it will involve challenges for the learner to overcome and it will usually create an emotional connection between the individual and the experience.
As with any form of change, of which any learning clearly is one, there are three aspects that need to be present. One is that the learner must have a clear vision of what the new future state looks like. The second is that the learner must be dissatisfied with their current state. And the third is that the learner need to see a clear next step on how to achieve the change.
These are all aspects that our experience design must invoke using our toolkit of storytelling, gamification, environmental factors and challenges. The amount of each one that is required will be related to the learner’s own resistance to change. This is where immersive learning experiences have one key advantage over more traditional forms of learning. The use of narrative and agency can engage individuals who otherwise might be disengaged and disenfranchised from other learning contexts.
Immersive learning aims to use the storytelling to engage learners and agency to inspire them to take action for themselves. These are powerful tools to overcome latent resistance and give the greatest opportunity for our outcomes to be realised.
Often our immersive learning experience will place the learner in a parallel world to their own, where they can be freed from assumed constraints and can use creativity to find solutions to the challenges they face.
It should be clear that stage 2 is at the core of immersive learning experiences. We don’t have time to delve too deeply into the design process here but you can find lots more information about this in our immersive learning publication.
Stage 3: Follow Through
With any form of change, it doesn’t happen in one go. So as much as we like to think that our experience alone will invoke the necessary change in our learner, we need to be realistic. If we designed a good experience and delivered it well, then our learner will be well along their journey. But the journey cannot end with the experience.
We always learn best when we continue to develop and embed our learnings. Whether this is through repeated active recall of the knowledge, its application in new contexts, or the development of a new skill, this will need to continue after the immersive learning experience.
Similarly, if our learning experience was designed to find creative solutions to existing problems then this need for follow through is also true. In this scenario it is the reflection of the learnings from the parallel world of our experience back into the real world that realises the greatest value. By its very nature, this must occur outside the experience as follow through.
A good example of such follow through is a structured reflection session a few days after the experience has finished. This should be guided by a facilitator, but should give space for the participants to share what they learned and what the benefits of that could be to them.
These are all examples of what Joe Pine is describing in stage 3 of the process. If we fail to deliver this stage as part of our overall engagement with the learner then we will likely fail to realise the learning outcomes. This is the biggest mistake we see when people try to design or implement immersive learning solutions and is a stage we must include in the design.
A Case Study
A example of an experience we created that evoked feedback of transformation from participants is our Enigma event.
Before each one we work with the organisation to understand their team and its learning goals. This acts as our initial diagnosis and works well when the organisation is open and shares the challenges they face.
These desired outcomes are then directly mapped into the content of the event. In Enigma events the narrative is created to mirror what the organisation is facing. This is always uses a new and inspiring scenario that the participants don’t immediately link to their organisation in any way. This could be a murder mystery, a time travelling adventure or any other story where the participants can be the hero.
At the end of each event there is then a period of reflection. Usually this is done in an informal setting, but led by a facilitator. This can be used to identify how the participants overcame the different challenges within their experience and how they can take these learnings back into the workplace.
It is from these individual experiences that we regularly uncover moments of transformation, some of which are talked about by participants many years after the event.
In Conclusion
By breaking down the 3 stages of a transformative experience we observe that they are all critical components of effective immersive learning. At chronyko we have looked in detail at experiences that have evoked feedback from participants about their own personal transformations. Breaking them down we clearly observe that they each follow the process detailed here.
It is not possible to conclusively state that that transformation of the learner must be an inherent feature of immersive learning. However, my observations of immersive learning in practice make a compelling case. Moreover, if we get these 3 stages right it is hard to see transformation as merely an unintentional side-effect of the process.
We can therefore make every immersive learning activity into a transformative experience, but to do that we need to follow all of these stages every time.
This often takes more work on the part of the design and delivery teams. It also requires more interaction with the learners and their teams both prior to and after the experience. These occur in stage 1 and 3 and are where the designers and delivery teams are traditionally more disengaged from the learners. However, if we get this right the benefits to the learners are clear.
Time for you to go and build transformative immersive learning experiences for yourself. Please feel free to share what you build with us and even consider writing a case study for this publication.
Martyn is a founder of chronyko who have over 15 years experience building and running escape games and many other types of immersive training and skills development experiences. He has seen first-hand how immersive learning can have a measurable impact. He is a passionate believer in how we can all learn from these experiences to better support lifelong learning for everyone.
