3rd Immersive Learning Research Network Conference (iLRN2017)
June 26th – 29, 2017
Coimbra, Portugal, European Union

Special Track on Immersive and Engaging Educational Experiences

Overview
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Immersive and engaging experiences are powerful teaching tools and allow innovative forms of entertainment, learning, training, and other experiences. More and more virtual reality platforms, virtual world environments, augmented/alternate reality applications and game -based experiences, and various forms of interactive media are designed to create engaging and immersive experiences in an educational setting. This can be a traditional classroom, a virtual and remote classroom setting or activities that further the educational agenda.
In this track, various forms of interactive media and “entertainment with purpose” are
discussed to create different forms of engagement. In this special track we discuss how
we can design, develop, and analyze educational environments to be both, immersive
and engaging. The track does not only cover research on design, development, and
analysis of such environments, we also invite submission describing non traditional and traditional design practice and development approaches to create different engaging experiences.

Topics
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The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Learning: learning in immersive environments, augmented realities, virtual realities, virtual worlds, and games
- Design: design techniques, practices, methods
- Analysis: frameworks, exploration studies, user studies
- Technology: platforms, devices, engines, environments, graphics, navigation, interactions, user analysis, data analysis, procedural content generation, artificial intelligence
- Non- traditional, non -classroom and non- curricular learning environments
- Development approaches to create different engaging experiences

Author Info
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All papers (including papers selected for Springer publication, Online Proceedings and poster submissions) must follow Springer’s style guidelines.
Contributions are welcome as work-in-progress, research results, technical development, and best practices. Research, development, and best practices contributions will be accepted according to their quality and relevance either as full or short papers. Selected papers from the main conference and special tracks will be published in the Springer Proceedings, and the rest of the accepted papers will be published in the online proceedings with a confirmed ISBN number/reference. Work-in-progress will only be accepted as short papers.

Full papers accepted for Springer publication must not exceed of 14 pages.
Long papers accepted for publication at Online Proceedings must not exceed of 10-12
pages.
Short papers accepted for publication at Online Proceedings must not exceed of 6 – 8 pages.
Submitted papers must follow the same guidelines as the main conference submissions. Please visit https://immersivelrn.org/ilrn2017/author_info/ for guidelines and templates.
For submitting a paper to this special track, please use the submission system
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ilrn2017 , log in with an account or register, and select the track “Special Track 5: Immersive and Engaging Educational Experiences” to add your submission

Special Track Chairs
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- Johanna Pirker, Graz University of Technology, Austria
- Foaad Khosmood, California Polytechnic State University, USA

Program Committee (to be confirmed and extended)
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Allan Fowler, Kennesaw State University
Brian Mcdonald, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK
Dominic Kao, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Kai Erenli, UAS bfi Vienna, Austria
Ryan Locke, Abertay University, UK
Volker Settgast, Fraunhofer Austria, Austria
Kai Erenli, University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna, Austria
Zoë J. Wood, California Polytechnic State University, USA
Britte H. Cheng, SRI International, USA
Helen Wauck, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
Guenter Wallner, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria

Contact
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For more information, please contact Johanna Pirker (jpirker@iicm.edu).