Pictured above, The 3-AS Model for Immersive Didactics is a didactical model intended for use in educational design, development, performance and quality assurance. The model integrates premier theoretical and practical insights from the fields of; (1) educational science and practice, (2) cognitive and educational neurology and (3) the entertainment and engagement sector into an interdisciplinary and evidence informed didactical model that is both flexible and easy to understand and apply.

The goal of the model is to help in the; (a) design, (b) development, (c) performance and (4) review of education in a very broad sense. It can be flexibly used in a large spectrum of educational contexts that we dubbed ‘Educational Levels‘ from the macro level of curriculum design and review, to the micro level of individual lessons and student-teacher interactions. Below is a brief list of Educational Levels the model can be applied on.

Educational Levels that The 3-AS Model for Immersive Didactics can be applied on.*

• Curriculum design development and review.
• The design, development and review of Learning Pathways.
• The design, development and review of individual lessons and lesson series, as well as the performance of the involved educators.
• The design, development and review of individual (online) learning activities as well as the performance of the involved educators.
• The design, development and review of student counseling and/or coaching trajectories, including individual student-teacher interactions, student activities and group activities.
• As a model for teacher training and the ongoing professional development of educators.

* Please note that the use of the model extends from the realm of formal education into the realm of professional training too. Wherever we use the word ’teacher’ this could also be a ’trainer’, a ‘student’ could also be a ’trainee’ or an ‘employee’.

How does it work? From Engagement to Immersion.

The 3-AS Model for Immersive Didactics aims to achieve a cognitive state we call Immersion. Everybody has felt immersed in an experience in their lives. This cognitive state of immersion and it’s positive impact on learning, retention and peoples proclivity to return to the experience that has induced this Immersion has been extensively studied both directly and indirectly in education, entertainment and cognitive neurology. At Immersive Didactics, we seek to achieve this cognitive state of Immersion through a pretty simple and straightforward formula that we call the Cycle of Immersive Education*. The 3-AS Model for Immersive Didactics is designed to help educators pull learners into The Cycle of Immersive Education.

Written out, this boils down to: “Sufficient Engagement sustained over time leads to Immersion, which leads to more engagement with the learning experience.”

_{*Note that we do not give any solid benchmarks for the amounts of engagement that will be ‘sufficient’ nor how much ’time’ being engaged is needed. The amount of engagement and the required time will differ based on the learner and the educational experience. Though generally, we believe more will be better!}

To help educators get a better grasp on The Cycle of Immersive Education, we define Engagement and Immersion as follows:

Engagement
“Engagement is a sustained state of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral involvement in learning, where students are actively processing content, emotionally invested, and intrinsically motivated to participate. This state fosters deep focus and curiosity, increasing the likelihood of achieving immersive learning experiences.“

Immersion
“An immersive cognitive state where students are fully absorbed in learning, balancing challenge and skill, experiencing curiosity and joy, and losing awareness of time—while developing an eagerness to return for more learning.“

A deeper dive on The Cycle of Immersive Education can be found here.

The contents of the model

The 3-AS Model for Immersive Didactics consists of three Acts on the X-Axis and three Stages on the Y-Axis, resulting in a flexible grid of evidence informed Cues on the intersections of the X and Y axis. Depending on the Educational Level (some examples listed above) that you wish to use the model for, the Cues on the intersection of the axis change, yet the three acts and the three stages remain the same. The Cues within the model are evidence-informed distillations and adaptions of combined insights from the broad fields of neurology, entertainment and education. These Cues help educators pull learners into The Cycle of Immersive Education. As the Educational Level changes, the Cues within the model change, depending on the context. We are currently working on Cues for the above list of Educational Levels within the broader context of Higher Education (University and/or EQF 5+) and Middle to High School. If you wish to contribute to the further development of evidence-informed Cues for the model, please get in touch. Below is a short introduction to the Three Acts and the Three Stages that the model contains.

The Three Acts of Immersive Education
The three Acts on the X axis follow the three P structure of a basic immersive narrative arc; Promises, Progress and Prizes. The use of this narrative arc helps educators pull learners into The Cycle of Immersive Education. In a nutshell, Promises are the explicit and implicit promises you make when you introduce, hook and emotionally bind your audience to the narrative. The Progress of the narrative then uses clever pacing and tricks to keep your audience engaged, so hopefully Immersion can take place. Prizes then offers a resolution to the narrative, or proposes a tangent or further exploration of the narrative that will make the audience wish to return for more. This basic 3-Act narrative structure is used throughout the multi-billion dollar industries of entertainment to engage audiences with their content. These multi-billion dollar industries are so very successful largely due to their understanding of the human psyche and how to manipulate it to illicit emotional responses. They know what works in this regard, because of the work of generations of artists and theorists before us that have spend their lives perfecting the craft of constructing immersive stories and experiences. As such, most of, if not all high-quality entertainment content such as books and other written stories, movies, series, plays, video-games, and video-content on YouTube and TikTok is built upon a similar basic narrative arc. There are very many different yet largely similar models and theories about narrative arcs. For the purpose of education, we have adapted these into an understandable three-act structure that can be flexibly applied on education and empowered it with leading insights, theory and models from the fields cognitive and educational neurology, as well as educational science and practice. We call this The Three Act Structure for Immersive Education. This all boils down to The 3-AS Model for Immersive Didactics utilizing this narrative arc for the creation of tailor-made evidence informed Cues for different Educational Levels to heighten the engagement of your audience, illicit the secretion of pleasurable hormones to scaffold learning and ultimately lead to a state we dubbed Immersion. A deeper dive on The Three Acts of Immersive Education can be found here.

The Three Stages of Immersive Education
The Three Stages on the Y-Axis consist of a basic loop of (1) Setting the Stage, (2) Performance and (3) Review. To construct these Three Stages of Immersive Education, we intergrated insights from managerial sciences, (individual) leadership, quality assurance/improvement and educational sciences. We call the parts of the model Stages because we wish to emphasize the perspective of looking at teaching and training as a complex performance art that can be improved upon continously but never perfected. We also believe teaching to be a very complex and demanding profession and that the act of teachers distancing themselves metacognitively from these phases can benefit wellbeing, longtime performance and sustainable professional development. To be able to fully do so, we believe it is a precondition that individual teachers as well as teacher teams foster a growth mindset, where mistakes are seen as neccesary and welcome stepping stones for improvement. In a nutshell, The Three Stages of Immersive Education entails the use of evidence informed Cues related to the three stages to constructively and sustainably work on the continual improvement of the educational program and their own (team) performance. A deeper dive on The Three Stages of Immersive Education can be found here.