Designing toward a more alive learning future.
Open World Learning Lab is an independent early-stage education research, design, and experimentation project.
The lab explores how real places, human mentorship, learner agency, intelligent tools, creative work, and cumulative reflection might form a more connected learning environment.
OWLL begins with prototypes rather than declarations. The goal is to design, test, document, and revise specific learning experiences before attempting to build a complete platform or institution around them.
The work currently includes place-based learning journeys, learner-support models, Field Notes, creator workflows, public system maps, and the early development of LOCUS.
Founded through practice, not abstraction.
Open World Learning Lab was founded by Peter Pielaet-Strayer, an educator and learning designer whose experience spans student mentorship, teaching, program design, hospitality, and place-based learning. He is currently completing an M.S. in Learning Design and Technology while developing OWLL's first learning journeys and the early LOCUS prototype.
His background spans student mentorship and teaching, program and experience design, hospitality, and place-based learning. He is currently completing an M.S. in Learning Design and Technology while developing First Landing, LOCUS, and the broader OWLL research and design program.
Creator Before the Platform
The first version of LOCUS is not software alone.
Before automating the system, OWLL is manually performing the work: studying a place or domain, identifying meaningful questions, building a learning architecture, guiding a learner through the experience, examining the evidence, and revising the journey.
This approach allows the product to emerge from real educational work rather than forcing learning into a predetermined software structure.
Open World Learning Lab is an independent early-stage research and design project. It is not currently operating as a school or accredited educational program.