2025 Keynotes
The Learning Ideas Conference 2025 was pleased to feature three keynote speakers:
Michelle Cortese is an XR design director, educator, and author, leading Metaverse design at Meta Reality Labs and teaching VR design at NYU. Her work focuses on immersive interaction systems, the ethics of embodied technology, and new forms of human expression. Michelle's research has been published by Bloomsbury, Meta, IEEE, MIT’s Immerse Journal, and more, and her creative work has been showcased at CES, Tribeca, SXSW, and Sundance.
Dr. Bruce McLaren, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and past President of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society, is a leading expert in AI-driven learning technologies. His research spans digital learning games, intelligent tutoring systems, e-learning design, and collaborative learning. Dr. McLaren has published over 200 works and has demonstrated how game-based learning can improve student outcomes—especially for female learners. He also brings over two decades of industry experience applying AI to real-world challenges.
Dr. Rupert Wegerif is a Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge and Founding Director of the Digital Education Futures Initiative at Hughes Hall. A leading theorist of education for the digital age, his work explores how dialogue and technology can shape future learning. His recent books, The Theory of Educational Technology (Routledge, 2024) and Rethinking Educational Theory (Edward Elgar, 2025), offer new frameworks for reimagining education in an AI-enhanced world.
Michelle Cortese
Design Director, Metaverse Input & Interaction, Meta
Adjunct Professor, New York University
New York, New York, USA
Talk: Leaving Flatland: Strategies, Frameworks and Materials for Creating Augmented and Virtual Reality Experiences
This presentation compiles a decade's worth of strategies and subject-matter that have proven successful in teaching augmented, virtual and extended reality (AR, VR, XR) concepts and practices. The methodologies in this talk have been successfully applied: in academia at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications program (in the form of a 14-week graduate class); in the tech industry at Meta Reality Labs' Metaverse department (in the form of an internal upskilling program); and in summary form at various conferences. The material argues that to build and use XR experiences, it’s not enough to learn the hard skills—it’s also our responsibility to prime ourselves for the human impact of the medium. As a means to develop XR experiences that are both enjoyable and accountable, this learning approach proposes we borrow structures and principles from Hedonomics, a branch of ergonomic science that facilitates pleasurable human-technology interaction. Through the Hedonomic Pyramid, we’re able to section our thinking off into regions (Safety, Function, Usability, Pleasure and Individuation) and map out industry-tested XR concepts for each. The result is a hierarchical checklist of proven principles, specifications and practices built to serve as a quickstart guide for implementing inclusive and holistic XR interfaces and systems.
About Michelle Cortese
Michelle Cortese is an XR design director, educator and author. She splits her professional time between Metaverse design leadership at Meta Reality Labs and teaching VR design at NYU. Her work explores immersive interaction systems; the ethical implications of embodied technology on end users; and the transmutation of human expression across new technologies and formats.
Michelle has authored AR and VR design research published via Bloomsbury, Meta, IEEE, OneZero, MIT's Immerse Journal and more; she has also exhibited work at CES, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, and Sundance.
More information about Michelle can be found on her site at https://www.ellecor.com/.
Dr. Bruce Martin McLaren
Full Professor
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Talk: Digital Learning Games: From Child to Adult Learning
Digital learning games have become a hot topic in educational technology and Learning Science research. My own lab, the McLearn Lab, has developed several digital learning games for late elementary and middle school students. One of these games, Decimal Point, has been utilized by over 1,500 middle school students in classroom studies over the past decade. In these studies, we explored a variety of game-based learning and Learning Science principles. In this talk, I will provide an overview of digital game-based learning (DGBL) and briefly discuss the games developed by my lab. More importantly, I will share insights into the impact of DGBL on adult learning. Finally, I will discuss my thoughts on the future of DGBL, particularly in adult education.
About Dr. Bruce Martin McLaren:
Dr. Bruce Martin McLaren is a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and is a past President of the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society (2017-2019). Dr. McLaren is passionate about how technology can support education and has dedicated his research to projects that explore how students can learn with digital learning games (also called educational games), intelligent tutoring systems, e-learning principles, and collaborative learning. Dr. McLaren's research with digital learning games, for instance, has shown that students can learn about decimals and decimal operations better by playing a game than by using more conventional technology. Dr. McLaren’s research with digital learning games has also uncovered a gender effect, in which females are more engaged and learn more from his Decimal Point learning game, Decimal Point.
Dr. McLaren holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Intelligent Systems from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh, and a B.S. in Computer Science (cum laude) from Millersville University (of Pennsylvania). During his career, he has published over 200 articles, including 42 journal articles.
In addition to his research background, Dr. McLaren has over 20 years’ experience in the commercial sector, applying research ideas to practical problems using artificial intelligence techniques.
Dr. McLaren’s Wikipedia page provides further information on his background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_M._McLaren.
Dr. Rupert Wegerif
Professor of Education
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK
Talk: Dialogic Education and Generative AI
That generative AI can outperform humans on many assessments should challenge us to rethink what we are doing in education. Students using GenAI to achieve targets in the current system are becoming less intelligent and more passive. But there are many ways of using GenAI that augment and expand intelligence. This talk argues that the advent of GenAI requires that we respond by developing a dialogic pedagogy which understands education as being about expanding shared dialogic space.
Drawing on The Theory of Educational Technology (Wegerif & Major, 2024) and Rethinking Educational Theory: Education as Expanding Dialogue (Wegerif, 2025), I argue via illustrations that AI should be used to help students think together with each other and with AI chatbots, getting them to ask better questions and make better evaluative decisions while at the same time equipping them with knowledge by inducting them into participation in long-term cultural dialogues. AI chatbots trained on vast datasets, potentially vetted data sets, can embody and give voice to the "dialogue so far"--what has been said in any given area of human endeavor--but the learning only happens when students dialogue with these cultural voices, engaging critically, refining prompts, and evaluating AI-generated responses.
Generative AI then is both a threat and an opportunity. If we do not change how we think about and assess education then using AI could reduce human intelligence and even make human beings seem increasingly irrelevant. If we respond to the challenge posed by rethinking what we are doing in education to turn all education into the expansion of dialogic space then this new AI has the potential to greatly increase intelligence, but a new kind of intelligence; human-AI collective intelligence.
About Dr. Rupert Wegerif:
Dr. Rupert Wegerif is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge and the founder and academic director of the Digital Education Futures Initiative at Hughes Hall, Cambridge (DEFICambridge.org). In the thirty years since his Ph.D. in educational technology at the Open University, he has focused on developing a new theory and practice of education for the digital age. His recent book with Louis Major, “The Theory of Educational Technology: A Dialogic Framework for Design” (Routledge, 2024) suggests ways to re-think education in the light of the AI-enhanced Internet and his latest book, “Rethinking Educational Theory: Education as expanding dialogue” (Edward Elgar, 2025) puts forward a coherent vision of education for the future.