Operationalizing “Leader[ship] Development” and Measuring the Impact of Mixed Reality

This chapter operationalizes “leader[ship] development” by integrating the Student Experience Ecosystem (SEE) with the US Air Force Airman’s Foundational Competencies (AFC) and analyzes end-of-course feedback (n = 6,748) to assess how mixed reality (MR) impacted cognitive, emotional, social, and experiential learning. The research produced eight themes, four of which reinforced the elements of self, others, ideas, and organizations from the AFC and SEE model, along with four themes that emerged from the analysis related to the impact of using MR: advanced decision-making, emotional authenticity, leader[ship] learning, and safe-to-fail reps. Leader[ship] development is a relational process that strengthens an individual’s own skills (intra-ability) in relationship to others (inter-ability) that occurs in parallel with developing ideas for organizational strength. This chapter calls for a shift toward immersive, student-centered, feedback-rich ecosystems in education and recommends broader integration of MR into curricula to cultivate more authentic, impactful leader[ship] development.