About

ILB and TWITLR: Enhancing Technical Education with Immersive Learning

The Immersive Learning Bootcamp is part of a three-year project (“TWITLR” – see below) aimed at improving technical education at two-year colleges by incorporating immersive technologies like 360° photography and videography, augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality.

The project will provide professional development opportunities for faculty to create immersive curricula through a two-week immersive technology summer bootcamp and content development support. This will enable students to learn in active environments and better prepare them for a rapidly changing workplace.

“TWITLR” (Technical Workforce Immersive Teaching and Learning Resource) “Creating Immersive Learning Resources for Technical Education at Two-Year Institutions” is a partnership between St. Cloud Technical & Community College (SCTCC), Dakota County Technical College (DCTC), Northland Community & Technical College (NCTC), the Immersive Learning Project (ILP), St. Cloud State University (SCSU), Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM), the National Center for Autonomous Technologies (NCAT), the Minnesota State Transportation Center of Excellence (TCOE), the Center for Aviation and Automotive Technological Education Using Virtual E-Schools (CA2VES), Midwest Teachers of Transportation and Industrial Areas (MTTIA), and ByteSpeed. TWITLR will develop immersive educational resources to increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B) and produce a highly skilled technical workforce. Focused on high-technology fields and using evidence-based resources, this project addresses NSF’s call to improve STEM education at two-year colleges and increase the skilled STEM workforce. This pilot project will reimagine Minnesota two-year college faculty practices through the implementation of immersive learning technologies in the classroom to address the rapidly changing landscape of technical education.

By creating a repository of open educational resources for instruction using immersive technologies, TWITLR will bridge the gap between industry and academia, and contribute to the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation’s economy.

TWITLR is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number 2202206. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed on this site are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.