PBN: In 1996 you helped to pilot Emerson’s successful Digital Culture program. Can you talk about immersive living/learning environments and their impact?

BOGEN: The core insight behind the development of “immersive living/learning environments” is that, from a student perspective, the different spaces and places where they live and work – the classroom, the dormitory, the online environment – are highly continuous and connected, and yet the conventional approach to thinking about and planning for their education is to treat these different areas as if they are separate. …

When we started the Digital Culture program, digital media were just beginning to be recognized for their power to establish new kinds of communities. We began working with a concept of the “electronic (or online) studio” as a new kind of workspace that faculty and students would access 24/7. … It has been hugely successful for first-year students, and has provided a model for the integration of digital media into our teaching and for developing an approach to education that focuses more holistically on how and where learning takes place.