Dislocated learning experiences

As it becomes the norm that learning experiences get located in space, we will develop new ways to critique educational offerings. The practice of finding where learning experiences are located and moving between locations will give us a difference sense of what to expect, what works and what could improve. Here's some possibilities I'm playing with for how learners will criticize locations when they become sophisticated consumers of immersive learning in space.

Too obvious a location: Delivered content will seem to be "plastered on billboards". When the thing needed to make progress is on the next page of text, it will lack challenge. If it can be found by simply following a link on a web page or in a pdf document, that will seem way too blatant. Locations can also err by being too hidden and difficult to find.

Too easy to find hidden locations: Learning experiences will get valued for how well hidden they are. Searching with difficulty will be part of the fun. Locations that are "hard to miss" will undermine the challenge and rewards for the learners. Hidden locations can also be so well hidden that no one finds them.

Too scattered a layout: The distribution of locations can lack "any rhyme or reason". If no pattern emerges for how the locations are spread out, it will seem like senseless busywork to the learners on the prowl. Distributed locations can also seem to be too centralized, contiguous or convenient.

Too straightforward a sequence: The order of locations can lack suspense, mystery and surprises. The sequence can come off like the predictable plot in a boring story. Sequenced locations can also seem too mysterious and incomprehensible to make sense of the order.

As we become accustomed to applying new criteria like these to learning experiences, conventional delivery of content and exercises through classrooms and online venues will seem increasingly antiquated. Just as the introduction of superior sound quality of FM stereo radio made AM radio sound tinny, well located learning experiences will make conventional education seem dislocated.