As technology continues to improve and we push the limits of computer science, education must adapt. Immersive experiences have the ability to take students out of their seats and let them explore all of the wonders of our world. Through Virtual Reality, we can explore our world without having to leave the comfort of our home. There will no longer be a need for screens when we can use Augmented Reality to create an adjustable screen in our physical space. Mixed Reality will provide us with experiences that blend our virtual and augmented worlds together in ways that we could have only imagined before. Finally, Immersive and 360 Videos can provide students with incredible experiences where learning surpasses what could take place in a traditional classroom.
Opportunity Statement:
The immersive experiences market is currently valued at $21.7B USD and is poised to reach $134.2B USD by 2030 (Precedence Research, 2022). Immersive experiences are believed to be a game changer in the education field as the technology continues to mature and become more affordable for schools. A study conducted by Lu & Liu in 2015 indicated that primary students who studied marine environments using AR performed better than those who used traditional methods. Particularly, the students were more confident in their learning activities, they successfully learned the concepts, and low academic achievers showed improvement in their learning while using AR (Lu & Liu, 2015).
Resources:
Gartner Top Ten Technology Trends 2025 – Spatial Computing
Immersive Experiences OER – Created by Katie Muzyka and Joseph Villella
Linus Tech Tips – The WAN Show Podcast – Metaverse Conference 2022 (1:03:15 – 1:17:05) – YouTube
Looking forward to the future of AR, VR, and MR – Forbes
10 Augmented Reality Experiences – Aircards
17 of the best of AR and VR games on iOS and Android – Science Focus
Best VR Videos Review – Software Testing Help
In my current profession as an education and training advisor, I work with higher education institutions, organizations and training centres in Ontario embracing immersive tools. BodySwaps offers soft skills training in different sectors with the help of VR and AI role playing. People training to work in healthcare, for example, can use VR to practice responding to realistic scenarios they may encounter while caring for patients in real-world settings. One major benefit of platforms like BodySwaps is the wide range of situations users can experience, many of which may be difficult or impossible to replicate in traditional training environments. Immersive technologies such as BodySwaps not only help users develop knowledge related to their field, but also strengthen soft skills and empathy in a safe, controlled environment, reducing the risk of harm to both themselves and others in real-life situations. Even though this technology has little direct relevance to my own personal or professional life, understanding it has allowed me to help clients who may benefit greatly from it.
Edith
Immersive Experiences are a highly opportunistic learning technology because they have the potential to significantly engage and motivate learners from Kindergarten to Grade 12. I participated in the AR/VR summer institute two years ago, and I was able to explore several applications that have strong educational value for students. Immersive technologies can allow students to “walk in someone else’s shoes,” which can be especially powerful for subjects like history, where events may feel distant or abstract. By placing students within these experiences, learning can become more relevant, meaningful, and engaging.
Just recently, during a professional development day, we discussed how meaningful it was to go on a field trip on Musqueam land and observe learning firsthand. It immediately made me think about immersive experiences and how being immersed in a subject can help develop empathy while also creating more meaningful and memorable learning experiences.
However, I do recognize that there are still challenges with this technology. For example, VR use is not generally recommended for younger children, and there are also concerns around accessibility and cost. Many schools may not be able to afford these technologies, which could create a significant financial divide in access to immersive learning tools. Despite these challenges, I can see strong potential for growth in this area, and I believe it will increasingly appear in schools in the future.
Hands-on learning experiences are the best ways for students to truly understand content and use it to make authentic, real-world connections. Unfortunately, with our limited resources to travel as well as safety and liability, not to mention time constraints, these real-world, hands-on, authentic experiences are not always possible for our teachers to provide.
When the real experience is not available, immersive technologies such as virtual reality can be provided to students instead. These experiences may be the closest students ever get to the top of Mt Everest, the bottom of the ocean, inside a human body, or pretty much anywhere else imaginable. When meaningfully programmed as part of a lesson, these experiences can be used to spark interest, initiate conversations, and generate questions as good or better than reading a textbook or watching a video.
Immersive experience should always be used as a learning tool to encourage further exploration and never be used as a substitute when the real experience is available.
Immersive Experience has a number of strengths that position it as an inevitable educational technology of the future. The ability to visit and experience places that would otherwise be impossible (for example, history students visiting ancient Greece) is an affordance that would likely increase learner interest in many topics. As well, it can provide exposure and practice in realistic scenarios, for example giving a speech or presentation to a crowd could be practiced iteratively to gain confidence and competence.
This technology removes passive input from the learning process and places the learner in a situation in which the learning must be active, engaged with, and experienced, which will be valued highly by future learners with short attention spans. Learners these days do not want to sit and read quietly – they want to be entertained. Immersive Experience seems a technology that provides a great opportunity for learners to learn while being entertained, and for educators to ensure the lesson content is absorbed and retained.
I’ve rated this market opportunity quite high, given it is inclusive of a few different areas mentioned in this poll: the future classroom, gamification, wearables, and experience design. All of these spaces are currently – and will continue to be – transformed by immersive technologies. Broadly speaking, when we discuss ensuring our graduates are ‘future ready’ what we are really saying is that we ensure curricula integrates, where possible, experiential learning. Like immersive learning, experiential learning encompasses a wide range of approaches of the same or similar spirit: a learner experience that is transformative. In the context of continuing education, where our focus is explicitly industry and ensuring graduates obtain the requisite skills for industry, this can mean designing competency-based education inclusive of simulations, gamified, formative assessments, virtual reality scenarios, and much more. The ‘immersion’ in the real world is remaking the traditional classroom and, I believe, providing us opportunities to design assessments that are more authentic and meaningful for students.
Last summer when I took a seminar on XR in Education, I was truly impressed by the possibilities for using it as an educational tool.
Immersive VR experiences allow for students to engage in hands-on learning that would otherwise be costly or dangerous. Also, as the technology improves, I see barriers to use for these technologies gradually decreasing.
This is new technology and adoption rates are different in different areas. With school districts often struggling to maintain current technologies, it can seem like a jump to also be funding class sets of VR headsets or XR glasses; however, I think that this is such an emergent technology that its use cases and influence are only increasing over time.
I have a very positive outlook for immersive technologies in the long-term, though there may be some challenges in the short-term as this technology develops.
Immersive technologies have the potential to be a genuine game-changer and, importantly, an equalizer in public education. As a junior high STEM teacher, I work hard to provide students with hands‑on, authentic learning experiences that build curiosity, confidence, and real‑world understanding. Yet in recent years, this has become increasingly difficult. Budget constraints, a shortage of bus drivers, rising transportation costs, and growing classroom complexities have made field trips and experiential learning opportunities harder to access than ever before. These barriers matter: research consistently shows that reading comprehension, critical thinking, and even vocabulary development are deeply connected to students’ background knowledge and lived experiences. When those experiences shrink, so does their academic growth.
At the same time, emerging studies are raising concerns about the impact of excessive or low‑quality screen time in schools. This creates a tension many educators feel daily: students need rich, embodied, meaningful learning, yet the logistical and financial realities of schooling limit what we can offer, and simply adding more screens is not the answer.
This is where immersive technologies offer a compelling middle path. When used intentionally and grounded in strong pedagogy, tools such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed‑reality simulations can expand students’ world knowledge in ways that were previously impossible. They can bring remote ecosystems into the classroom, allow students to manipulate scientific phenomena at scale, and open access to experiences that “have‑not” schools could never afford. Crucially, immersive technologies can amplify, not replace, foundational skills by supporting deeper understanding, contextual learning, and equitable access to high‑quality experiences.
In this sense, immersive technologies are not about adding more screens; they are about designing better experiences. They allow educators to take the best of what technology can offer-interactivity, visualization, embodied learning-while still protecting and prioritizing the essential human elements of teaching.
I was lucky to participate in the ETEC 565 Summer Institute course, GenAI and AR, VR, and XR in Education, in 2024 and it opened my eyes to the incredible opportunity that immersive experiences bring to education. As a firm believer in constructivist learning theory, immersive technologies align strongly with my teaching beliefs as they allow students to build knowledge through active participation and experience. When students can manipulate items and explore environments that would otherwise be inaccessible, new possibilities for authentic learning are created.
During ETEC 565, I was able to visit the Emerging Media Labs which was an excellent introduction to the power Virtual Reality has in allowing students to view and manipulate items. It also highlighted the importance of not choosing to use technology before properly assessing the pedagogical purpose. In education it can often feel like we are being asked to use new technology simply to demonstrate innovation, without a real analysis on whether it is the right tool to use for the job.
AR and XR technologies also offer support for students with diverse needs, allowing for differentiated instruction. Abstract concepts can be explored through visual and spatial interactions, activities can become multimodal, and text-heavy content becomes more accessible for a variety of learning needs. As technology such as smart glasses become more mainstream and economically viable, the possibility for classroom use increases. Immersive technologies offer teachers the opportunity to redesign learning as something students should be experiencing and creating, rather than simply receiving.
As someone who grew up on video games (and still enjoys them immensely), I’m glad to say that I think VR/AR will continue to have an outsized impact on the quality of education going forward. While I understand that there are accessibility and funding discussions to be had in regard to this technology, I think as the state-of-the-art progresses and computational power becomes cheaper, VR/AR can continue to be a powerful change-maker for education. I’m a firm believer that there is no replacement for the “real thing” when it comes to hands-on and practical skills, but for those situations where the real thing just isn’t feasible, VR/AR is the next best thing.
There is also something to be said about the kinds of experiences students can have that are maybe not so realistic, but still add to a students understanding of a given topic. I think about the Magic School bus episode where Ms Frizzle shrinks the class bus down to microscopic size to be able to go into and explore the human body. This is just one example of how VR/AR could be utilized to make learning jump off the page and into the other senses of our learners, making the learning more memorable and novel.
While I do not have direct work experience using immersive technologies in education, I recognize their value in creating safe and realistic training environments for high-risk or high-stakes situations. For example, Virtual Reality can allow students to practice dangerous tasks such as firefighting or complex healthcare procedures without placing themselves or others at risk.
I am also interested in the potential of immersive experiences to improve equity and accessibility in education. Virtual and Augmented Reality can provide students with opportunities they may not otherwise have the financial or geographic means to experience in person, such as visiting historical sites like the Colosseum in Rome or exploring museums and cultural landmarks around the world.
Immersive technologies may also have significant value in environmental education by giving students access to ecosystems and environments that are difficult or impossible to experience directly. For example, students could virtually explore coral reefs or other sensitive environments, helping build awareness, empathy, and public support for conservation efforts.
This past school year, I had an immersive experience through a free teacher session hosted at our school by VRCORE Education. This opportunity was thrilling, exciting, and innovative for the teachers as we walked around the International Space Station or created new atoms. However, if I ask my students what they like to do at home, they often respond by saying they like going on VR. While immersive experiences are typically new/newish for teachers, VR is already part of our students’ daily lives. After the VR session, I was drawn into conversations with the VR coordinator/teacher about designing a social studies-focused immersive experience related to our new curriculum. It was definitely a thought-provoking moment for me as I pondered creating exciting learning opportunities in the digital landscape. I am now curious about the use of immersive experiences in the classroom for day-to-day learning.