Carl Boel

Carl Boel was a secondary education teacher in English and Dutch for 15 years. Since 2006 he investigated how technology could enhance his courses and teaching practice. He inspired hundreds of teachers and staff with keynotes and workshops. In 2016 he started working at Ghent University as a lecturer in academic writing and presentation skills. These courses were integrated into other courses within the concept of language across the curriculum. In 2018 he was asked by Odisee to create a MOOC strengthening novice preservice teachers in their communication and self-regulating skills. Since 2019 he works as a researcher at Thomas More investigating how the affordances of XR can enhance a learning and training experience. He combines expertise from both research and industry with a focus on evidence-based instructional design. Carl is a researcher on XR in education, both at Thomas More University of Applied Sciences and at Ghent University, where he is completing his PhD on this topic. He is involved in several research projects on XR, both domestic and internationally. Carl also leads the Learning Network on XR in education in Flanders and was the main author for the advisory policy report on XR in education for the Ministry of Education in Flanders. He continues to expand his XR network as co-chair of XR Valley, which aims to bring together everything XR in Belgium. As an independent XR-designer he founded Virtual Learning is Reality and has designed, developed and tested multiple learning experiences for companies, organizations and governmental institutions. While doing so, he noticed a need for scalable XR solutions which led to the birth of deXR, an authoring tool to create your own XR training, guided by evidence-based instructional design principles.