Languagelab.com
| Industry | Technology, Virtual Reality |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2005 |
| Headquarters | London, UK |
|
Area served
|
Global - Online |
| Services | Business Virtual Reality and Tools |
|
Number of employees
|
20 |
| Website | immerse.io/ |
Immerse Learning (formerly called Languagelab.com) is an English school based in an Online Virtual World. It is the first school that teaches exclusively online in a virtual environment; students and teachers use avatars to navigate the environment and take part in lessons. Lessons are also completely contextual, which is in direct contradiction to the traditional classroom system.
Immerse Learning was founded in 2005 as Languagelab.com in London by David Kaskel and Shiv Rajendran. Having been amazed at how quickly foreign players had picked up language skills in MMORPGs, Kaskel began to look into how learning took place in video games. To date Languagelab.com has 80 employees based in 14 different countries and caters to about 1000 students (2011).
Languagelab.com teaches English to students from more than seventy countries.
In 2011 Languagelab.com announced a partnership with Pearson Education to produce a virtual world product for Business English. The product is called Market Leader Live and contains content from the Financial Times.
In February 2014, Languagelab.com relaunched as Immerse Learning with a proprietary immersive learning platform designed specifically for corporate and higher education programmes.
In 2016 Immerse Learning changed its name to Immerse and their web address is now Immerse.io. Immerse provide businesses with ready-made VR scenarios or with software and tools to create their own.
Languagelab.com's current methods based on an internal research and development program, led by Rajendran, spanning from 2005 to 2008 involving testing a range of models of teaching with students from more than 50 countries. Based on immersive learning, the idea that all lessons should be taught contextually and uses virtual environments to recreate the scenarios where interactions would take place in the real world. Experts believe that virtual worlds and immersive learning are far more effective for studying higher order cognitive lessons "Generative Learning" than the traditional classroom based system, which is taught in abstraction. Modern research suggests this method of learning is more effective than traditional methodology in which new words are introduced gradually through abstraction. This method is similar to Situated cognition.
All teaching is done in real time by real teachers.
...
Wikipedia