Alex Stolyarik has spent nearly a decade implementing project-based experiential education internationally. In 2011, as a member of the Democracy and Art nonprofit, he originated a joint venture between the British “London Metropolitan University” MARCH and the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. A year later he launched a test program designed to engage graduate students with “real-world” land development projects. In three years of program refinement, he and his team organically grew neighborhood development collectives, jump-started public workshops, and graduated 80 students with dual degrees in Public Administration and Planning.

Alex holds a joint Master’s of Science from MIT and
Harvard Business School.

What I believe is possible: With recent advancements in Virtual Reality technology, we have the advantage to experience our world from the new “inside-out/outside-in” dimension. We can erase borders and practice our global intracultural future immersively, as in “for real.”

What I propose: Use immersive technologies, gaming and play to innovate in education ecosystems. Updated knowledge delivery can most effectively impact nonviolent human development and progress.

Why now: As an educator, I saw that it’s nearly impossible to facilitate and simultaneously explore different scenarios of project development in real-time experiential education; I know from my work with schools and colleges the enormous amount of financial and human resources we spend to facilitate the “learn-by-making” algorithm. Now, with the advancement of mixed realities, artificial intelligence, and virtual conferencing, we can collaborate internationally and conduct distributed education experiences in a new medium beyond the current the constraints of base reality.