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| Source: Stockphoto |
I used to fly back and forth to Salt Lake City, a lot. I stopped
counting after 26 trips. Statistically, it’s bound to happen on those
flights. And it did.
I sat next to Donny Osmond.
I didn’t bug him, talk with him, or ask for a photograph with him. Because I was focused on something else, something much more important to me. I was focused on a book.
To this day, the book sits within arm’s reach of my working space. What book is so important? The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning,
edited by Richard E. Mayer, 2009 edition. What held my attention so
strongly? The disciplined and codified research that says no matter how
fancy you make the learning method, the learning is the same.
How could this be? Bigger, better, faster, happier learning is my raison d’etre. What’s going on here?
I
started my doctoral program with one focused idea: that I believe in
the power of transmedia. The entire field of virtual reality is still in
the wild wild west stage, and here, anybody can do anything. Hence, I’m
calling it all transmedia. But I don’t mind what it is called*. I’m
just fascinated with what we can do virtually that fools the mind and
brain into thinking an experience actually happened.