Facilitating Engaged Learning in the Interaction Age Taking a Pedagogically-Disciplined Approach to Innovation with Emergent Technologies

The purposes of this paper are to explore emerging technologies, engaged learning, and features and students of the Interaction Age and to identify connections across these three realms for future research and practice. We begin by highlighting those elements of the Interaction Age that suggest a shift in the affordances and applications of digital content. The Interaction Age, as an extension of the Information Age, distinguishes digital content as not just content accessed by students but as content around which they engage and construct knowledge in a social manner. Second, we review technologies emerging on college campuses as well as categorize and compare newer technologies including mobile learning, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and ubiquitous learning. These technologies are among those at the leading edge of innovation and hold promise for educational application. However, in light of the Interaction Age, we argue that these technologies must contribute to student learning, and in particular, student engagement in learning. Thus, we present the outcomes of a literature review regarding engagement and engaged learning. Finally, we explore prominent connections between emerging technologies, engaged learning, and students and devices of the Interaction Age, offering examples of these linkages to stimulate future research and practice. The application of a variety of technologies for learning and teaching is influenced by two significant forces: the realm of technological innovation (especially, today, in regard to hardware and software) and the realm of learning theory. In consideration of the technological trajectory, learning has evolved from textbooks to television to computers, and now to mobile digital devices, in a relatively short time. In respect to the theoretical trajectory, expansions in ontological and epistemological thought have provoked a broadening of learning paradigms (e.g., behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism) suggesting moves toward more self-directed, contextualized, and engaged learning environments and approaches. Developments in ways of knowing and ways of learning have evolved against a backdrop of society’s evolution from an Industrial and Information Age to an Interaction Age.