This book provides education scholars insight into current theoretical and methodological approaches to conceptualize, facilitate, and examine learning and identity in virtual learning environments such as games and simulations.

Virtual learning environments (VLEs) are being increasingly designed, implemented, and researched because they offer opportunities for learning that are embodied, enactive (i.e., learning by doing), extended into the learners’ environment, and embedded in authentic and potentially valuable contexts for identity exploration. Each chapter in this book uniquely illustrates the learning and identity processes, characteristics, and outcomes that VLEs can facilitate. Together, these approaches provide a foundation for use-inspired research that guides how individuals intentionally, continually, and dynamically reinvent the self for a future that requires flexibility and adaptability in both career and academic spaces.

The volume will be a key resource for researchers, scholars, and practitioners engaged in the interdisciplinary fields of learning sciences, learning analytics, and learning design. It was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Experimental Education.