Designing Innovative Learning Experiences in the Digital Wilds
- Eduling
- 1 minute ago
- 7 min read
In the Language Innovators podcast episode titled "Designing Innovative Learning Experiences in the Digital Wilds," hosts Dr. Linh Phung and Nikolas Wolfe interview Dr. Greg Kessler, a professor of innovative learning design and technology at Ohio University. The conversation explores the concept of the "digital wilds," autonomous online spaces like social media and gaming where authentic communication occurs. Dr. Kessler warns against "taming" these vibrant environments in traditional classrooms, which strips away learner motivation. The speakers also critically evaluate the exploitation of user data, the historical failures of EdTech rollouts, and the vital role of teacher preparation in fostering lifelong learner autonomy.
Watch the full video here.
Teaser
Greg: One of the challenges with when people bring the digital wilds in their classroom is it's no longer wild. It’s like bringing a wild animal in and you domesticate or tame it. Then it becomes just like any other classroom activity and loses all of the motivation, all of what it had that made it compelling and becomes just another classroom activity.
Greg: Schools are filled with technologies that they've been convinced to buy that go unused because in the long run they're not useful. Then you have great platforms that come along like Eduling for example which I happen to think is a really wonderful platform with the task-based kind of activities that you have. I think that's fantastic. There are a handful of really good language learning companies out there.
Greg: So, and I think those decisions should really be based on helping students not only with their immediate needs, but helping them with their long-term needs and goals, which is really about helping them develop learner autonomy, helping them to become better learners and capable of being in charge of their own learning in the future.
Introduction and Background
The podcast opens with host Dr. Linh Phung introducing Dr. Greg Kessler, a professor of innovative learning design and technology at Ohio University. Kessler has an extensive background in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and teacher preparation, having worked in 59 countries throughout his career.
Kessler recalls his early exposure to the World Wide Web in California, noting how it transformed access to information. He explains that his current work heavily revolves around teacher preparation and artificial intelligence (AI), trying to act as a bridge between the rapid evolution of technology and the teaching domain. He highlights three active projects:
Training teachers to use AI for curriculum design in the Middle East.
Helping South Korean teachers leverage AI to be more effective.
Working with K-12 school administrators in the Pacific Northwest to utilize AI for better leadership and organizational responsiveness.
Unpacking the "Digital Wilds" and Innovative Learning Design
Linh guides the conversation toward the core theme: designing innovative learning experiences in the "digital wilds." Kessler argues that true innovation isn't about specific platforms, but rather harnessing real-world digital spaces to make learners truly engaged in meaning making and co-construction of knowledge.
When asked about the definition of the "digital wilds," Kessler describes them as:
"...the places where people live their digital lives, where they work and socialize and congregate and collaborate and co-construct reality."
These spaces include social media platforms, gaming environments, hobby groups, and crowdsourcing sites (such as Falling Fruit for foraging).
Linh raises a practical concern regarding language learning in the wilds: do students in non-English-speaking countries actually use the target language in these spaces, or do educators overestimate the prevalence of English? Kessler acknowledges that some spaces are language-ambiguous, but suggests that instructors guide students incrementally by moving from spaces dominated by their native language with a little English to environments where English is the primary common language among users. Linh connects this to "technology-mediated task-based language teaching," emphasizing the value of utilizing immediate, practical tasks in the learner’s daily life.
Colonization, Rewilding, and Domestication of the Internet
The conversation shifts to how the internet has changed. Nik notes that early digital spaces felt filled with "weirdness" and random discovery, aided by old tools like the StumbleUpon browser extension. However, he laments that the modern internet feels "colonized by social media" and has shrunk, trapping users on just a few major websites.
Kessler agrees and points to scholar Steve Thorne's concept of "rewilding education". A major challenge, Kessler warns, is that when teachers try to bring these spaces into a traditional curriculum, they strip away the very elements that made them engaging:
"I think one of the challenges with when people bring the digital wilds in their classroom is it's no longer wild, right? ... It's like bringing a wild animal in and you... domesticate [it]. You tame it and... then it becomes just like any other classroom activity and it loses all of the motivation..."
He adds that "gamification" often suffers from the same flaw: turning something into a point-based school assignment rarely makes it a good game. To balance intentional design with authentic engagement, Kessler stresses that teachers must remain reflective, constantly seeking student feedback and revising their practices.
Search Engines, Gatekeeping, and Corporate Extraction
Nik criticizes modern search tools, pointing out that Google has arguably become less useful because it prioritizes sponsored ad space and utilizes features like "AI overviews" to keep users on-platform rather than sending them out into the wider web. Kessler notes that Google intentionally moved away from being a quick "train station" to external links. Because the web is more complicated now, Kessler emphasizes the critical need for digital literacy, mentioning that he has to teach his PhD students how to effectively use Google such as using Boolean search terms on day one.
When Linh asks about the "dark side" of automation, personalization, and AI, Kessler reframes the issue:
"I don't think there's a dark side of technology. It's a dark side of humanity that's reflected in technology. Technology is neutral until it's been programmed by someone to not be neutral."
He expresses disappointment that the democratic leveling potential of the early internet has been overshadowed by a handful of massive corporations that profit purely by "dominating people's attention" and fostering platform addiction.
Nik shares his painful personal experience trying to delete his digital footprint on Facebook under GDPR regulations, noting that the platform forces users to manually delete every past "like" or interaction line-by-line, creating an excruciating barrier to leaving. Kessler agrees that this algorithmic friction is entirely intentional to induce nostalgia and keep users trapped. However, Kessler reminds the hosts that social media usage varies globally. For example, Facebook has been used successfully as a learning management system and cross-generational communication in countries like Indonesia and Vietnam.
The EdTech Backlash and "UI Smokescreens"
Linh brings up the current American backlash against educational technology, including bans on school screen time, comparing tech giants to resource-amassing empires. Kessler validates this backlash, noting a long history of schools being manipulated by marketing campaigns to purchase bad products:
"...schools are filled with technologies that they've been convinced to buy that go unused because in the long run they're not useful. And so there's this long legacy of that."
He praises smaller, task-based platforms like Eduling while citing hardware failures like Smartboards, which usually end up sitting unused in classroom corners. Nik shares a similar story from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where massive, heavy Microsoft smartboards eventually just became expensive vertical surfaces for physical Post-it notes and suction cups. Kessler also warns that wholesale bans on screens accidentally victimize students with visual, hearing, or physical disabilities who rely heavily on digital augmentations.
Immersive Worlds: VR, AR, and AI
Kessler discusses his long-running course on immersive learning, highlighting three core books he assigns to students:
Our Next Reality: How the AI-Powered Metaverse Will Reshape the World by Alvin Graylin and Louis Rosenberg, which explores the convergence of VR and AI.
Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier, which criticizes closed tech monopolies.
Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, which explores working and learning with AI as a partner.
Nik applies Lanier’s theories to modern AI, explaining how machine learning models are built on the back of heavily exploited human labor. Companies scrape public websites (the digital wilds) and hire underpaid contractors in the Global South (e.g., Kenya and Bangladesh) to painstakingly clean data and rank AI outputs. Despite this mass human effort, corporations package the final product as a singular technological marvel, pocketing all API fees while decreasing the value of the very human translators and writers who trained it. Kessler echoes this sentiment, adding that Lanier argues everyday internet users deserve royalties for the data they upload that tech companies monetize.
Regarding specific language applications, Kessler praises Immerse as a rare VR product that gets language learning pedagogy right. Nik critiques most VR language apps as being a "UI smokescreens" which overemphasize graphics while forcing users to complete boring, mechanical translation drills. Linh gives an example of a successful task-based VR project from Israel designed to help engineering students practice job interviews, though it cost an inaccessible $2,000 per session. She argues that mobile phone apps, while less immersive, offer a much cheaper and more accessible venue for interaction-driven language learning.
Teacher Preparation and Learner Autonomy
In closing, Kessler states that teacher preparation should prioritize developing long-term learner autonomy. By showing students how to navigate the digital wilds safely and productively, teachers give them the tools to remain lifelong learners outside school walls.
Nik illustrates this with a personal memory from his time in the Peace Corps in Ghana. While teaching basic web design, he showed his students how to troubleshoot their own programming errors using Boolean search operators, Google, and Stack Overflow. Years later, a student who became a professional web designer told him that learning how to autonomously search for answers online was the most impactful thing he had learned.
Linh and Kessler conclude the episode by looking forward to the upcoming CALICO (Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium) conference from July 7th to 11th in Oxford, Ohio, USA, which Kessler is co-chairing and Linh is presenting at, describing it as a tight-knit community that feels like an extended family.
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