Reimagining Learning: Why Context and Guidance Matter in the Digital Age

Ulla-Maaria Koivula June 8, 2025

At ThingLink, our mission is to empower educators, trainers, and content creators to build truly impactful digital learning experiences. We believe that great learning doesn’t just happen through exposure to information. It happens when learners are immersed in meaningful contexts and supported by clear, relevant guidance. Our goal is to develop tools that make it easy to reproduce these optimal conditions for learning in digital environments.

So, what do we mean by optimal conditions?

1. Learning Is Contextual and Multi-Sensory

In real-world learning, we understand new concepts best when we experience them in context. When we can see, hear, and sometimes even interact with the environment where that knowledge is applied. This kind of contextual, multi-sensory learning deepens engagement and anchors information in memory.

ThingLink enables this by turning any space, whether it’s a physical environment, a historical moment, a visualised scene from a story, or a complex system into an immersive and explorable learning experience. Whether it’s a virtual field trip, an interactive simulation, or a step-by-step equipment guide, we make it easy to place knowledge inside the world, not apart from it.

In Action: A Complex System Simplified

2. Learning Requires Guidance

Research in learning science from Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory to modern cognitive load theory shows that learners benefit from structured guidance. The presence of a “more knowledgeable other” helps direct attention, clarify meaning, and scaffold the learning process. That guide might be a teacher, a peer, a digital mentor, or even AI. and adaptive scenarios that respond to the learner’s choices and needs.

ThingLink supports this need for guidance by allowing creators to annotate visual environments with voice, text, video, and interactive prompts. Our new AI-assisted tools make it even easier to build step-by-step explanations, voice-guided walk-throughs, and adaptive scenarios that respond to the learner’s choices and needs.

In Action: Multi-Media and Multi-Modal Learning Experiences

3. Toward a Vision of Digital Apprenticeship

Bringing context and guidance together leads us to a new model we call digital apprenticeship. In this model, learners explore realistic environments at their own pace, supported by embedded mentors and cues. It’s a scalable, accessible way to offer hands-on learning, without needing a physical classroom, field site, or constant instructor presence.

This is more than just digital content, it’s a way of thinking about learning in the 21st century. Our vision is to help every learner, regardless of location or background, gain access to high-quality, contextualized, and guided learning experiences that support real-world skill development.

Further Recommended Reading

Theoretical Roots of ThingLink: From Vygotsky to Virtual Learning

Multi-Modal Learning in Action

The Rise of Shared Immersive Spaces: A New Era for Education and Training

The Skills Gap Crisis: Why the Public Sector Must Take Charge of Modern Training Now