Improve your practice.

Enhance your soft skills with a range of award-winning courses.

What is Immersive Learning?

November 20, 2025 - Daniel O'Dowd

Immersive learning practices are becoming increasingly common in high schools, universities, and as part of corporate L&D programs, and for good reason.

Rooted in behavioral and cognitive science, immersive learning can greatly enhance a learner’s training experience by increasing knowledge retention and by providing on-demand practical experience of a task or scenario.

What is Immersive Learning?

Immersive learning leverages technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) to facilitate learning. Immersive learning methods simulate real-world scenarios to create a sense of presence and immersion in the learning process.

The learner’s interactions with virtual objects mimic those of the real-world, allowing the learner to learn through experience in a safe environment, where they are free to make (and learn from) mistakes, without real-world consequences.

Immersive learning typically utilizes one of the following immersive technologies:

Virtual Reality (VR) – fully immerses you in a virtual world with the use of a headset
Augmented Reality (AR) – enhances your real-world view by adding digital elements over it
Mixed reality (MR) – digital and physical objects co-exist and interact in real-time using a combination of VR and AR
Simulation learning – 3D visualizations and simulations provide a semi-immersive experience

What makes a training experience immersive is the fact that the virtual learning environment is deeply engaging, and evokes the same emotions from the learner as the real world would. That means that once those same feelings are experienced in the real world, they’re already familiar with them.

Taking VirtualSpeech as an example, someone who is scared or nervous of an upcoming public speaking appointment can practice that scenario in a realistic way in virtual reality. Practice breeds confidence, meaning that when that person has to deliver a speech in front of a real audience, they’ll have a better handle on their nerves – and feel more prepared.

Immersive methods of learning have been shown to be extremely effective, with one study finding that VR training has a retention rate of 75%, significantly higher than that of traditional learning methods such as lectures (5%), reading (10%), and audio-visual learning (20%).

How Does Immersion Improve the Learning Experience?

Several factors highlight how immersion improves a learner’s ability to retain knowledge, develop skills, and have a positive learning experience. The benefits of immersive learning have been studied both in academic and professional settings, with robust figures backing it as a teaching methodology.

Experiential Learning

One of the main impacts of immersive methods of training on the learning experience is that they turn learners from passive recipients of information into active participants.

Experiential learning, which involves reflecting on an experience after doing it, is a highly engaging and effective way of developing skills. Modern immersive technology provides learners with the ability to use experiential learning in a simulated environment where their mistakes don’t have real-life consequences.

This means learners can then reflect on their experience and try again while applying their newfound learnings. A hands-on experience stimulates an emotional response from a learner and makes training more memorable.

As a whole, learners who learn through an experiential method are more likely to remember what they learned, be motivated to go deeper with their learning, and develop complementary skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving.

Improved Focus

In addition, learners partaking in immersive learning experiences are more focused and attentive. Virtual reality captures the full, undivided attention of a learner by immersing them in realistic situations and removing them from distractions.

The traditional learning environment is full of distractions. Teachers have to overcome numerous obstacles to win learners’ attention, and we all know that some people who press ‘play’ on an e-learning video then scroll through social media while it plays in the background.

As immersive learning puts the learner at the heart of the learning experience and (especially with VR) removes external distractions, learners naturally become more focused on their learning experience.

In fact, a PwC study found that people were 4x more focused during VR learning than during other, more traditional learning methods.

Immersive training content can also be customized to meet individual learners’ needs. If a learner is struggling with a particular task, for example, they can be placed in a different scenario where they can try a simpler version of the task and start building their skills from a different base.

Training courses that use immersive technologies tend to have higher completion rates because of this interactive style and ability to hold a learner’s focus. For example, VirtualSpeech provides e-learning courses combined with VR, with the completion rates for these courses sitting at 30 to 40% higher than traditional e-learning courses.

Better Learning Analytics

An undervalued benefit to immersive learning is that it gives teachers and trainers a level of performance and usage data previously impossible to quantify.

Immersive training technology provides data-driven insights from the learners through real-time and post-performance feedback, which helps to measure learning progress and identify areas for improvement.

With XR (extended reality) technology, you can analyze data on a learner’s performance like never before. Based on this information, teachers and trainers can update learning experiences and guide students further as they progress along their learning journey.

This data can include:

Duration of use
Number of repetitions
Completion rates
Eye contact and body language assessment
Number of correct answers or interactions

These data points all help teachers to get more detailed insights into the progress a student is making. For example, this information can be leveraged to determine skills that need particular attention on both an individual or group level.

VirtualSpeech’s admin dashboard gives organizations full visibility over their learners’ activity and progress in this manner.

Does Immersive Learning Actually Work?

In short, Immersive learning does work. It leads to higher levels of engagement, focus, and knowledge retention from learners while offering teachers and trainers access to in-depth information about their learners’ progress.

The numbers back this conclusion. One study found VR learners are up to 275% more confident to act on what they learned after training, and VirtualSpeech data shows that 95% of participants who practiced immersively through VR said it helped them prepare better for real-world situations.

Additionally, a University of Maryland study found that the majority of the research participants in the study said the immersive “presence” while using VR allowed them to focus better – and VR users demonstrated noticeably better information recall ability.

Immersive Learning for Workforce Training

Immersive learning is quickly starting to replace expensive in-person training, particularly for enterprise-level organizations, thanks to the fact that it can be deployed cost-effectively at scale

Companies can use immersive training to effectively onboard new hires, safely train staff in otherwise high-risk situations, and improve employees’ soft skills to help achieve individual and organizational goals.

Crucially, immersive learning can be easily deployed at scale to deliver the same high-quality training to employees, regardless of where they’re located.

Immersive learning’s simulated scenarios can train specific employee skills, including customer service, forklift driving, and sales pitching. This type of training is also effective for high-risk and potentially life-threatening situations.

For example, police officers can learn how to act in case of accidents or dangerous situations and medical staff can perform and practice difficult operations first in VR. In these situations, and others, immersive learning helps learners to become more competent and build confidence in their ability in a safe environment.

Examples of Immersive Learning

Immersive learning experiences are already being used worldwide by both individuals and organizations in a variety of fields to support learning and development.

Soft Skills

Immersive learning is already having a massive impact on soft skill development, which was normally developed “on-the-job” through experience and trial-and error. Now, applications like VirtualSpeech allow learners to practice presentation skills, customer service, job interviews, and more in virtual reality, with tailored feedback provided after every practice session.

This allows learners to practice these soft skills as often as they need in a safe, controlled environment before applying them in real life with actual customers or clients.

VirtualSpeech can be used to safely practice a wide range of soft skills

Medical Training

Immersive learning is also becoming more popular in fields such as medical training, with doctors, nurses, and surgeons leveraging virtual reality training to simulate high-stakes environments in a safe way that allows for making mistakes.

This extends to medical schools, who use immersive learning technology to prepare their students for the situations they’ll face in real hospitals.

Osso VR and SyncVR Medical are often used in medical training, and VirtualSpeech has a dedicated feature that helps doctors practice delivering difficult news to patients in an empathetic way.

Language Learning

It’s said that the best way to learn a language is to surround yourself with native speakers and use the language in your daily life – language immersion. Virtual reality has made this much more practical and accessible, regardless of where you are in the world.

Immersive language learning apps allow learners to practice conversations through language exchange platforms, engage in immersive simulations, and receive instant feedback on pronunciation and grammar.

Learners can practice specific scenarios, such as ordering food in a Parisian restaurant, ahead of a trip to France. Or they can work on their general conversational skills in Korean after making a friend on an exchange trip to Seoul, for example. Language learners can integrate VR into their usual routines, like the 15/30/15 method, to enhance them further.

Apps such as Mondly VR and ImmerseMe are popular options, while VirtualSpeech offers an English for Business course designed to help users learn the lingua franca of international business communication.

Health and Safety

Immersive technology is being utilized in many industries to help employees understand health and safety training more effectively, and make workplaces safer.

Platforms like Pixaera and Immersive Factory offer realistic practice for workers on construction sites or in warehouses, covering topics like working with heights, around forklifts, or in confined spaces to name a few.

These simulations help workers prepare for potential workplace hazards and the high-risk situations they might find themselves in as they perform their duties.

Education

Immersive learning has many applications in educational environments. In addition to helping students with important workplace soft skills (such as job interviews), virtual reality can also help enhance existing curriculums in subjects like history and geography.

This immersive technology can be much more exciting for students, who through VR can take a virtual trip to ancient Rome, visit the moon, or explore the depths of the ocean, sparking their curiosity and imagination.

These captivating virtual scenarios encourage learners to open their minds and embrace their subjects beyond reading from a textbook. Naturally, these learning experiences are more interesting than traditional school assignments (like writing research papers).

Deploying an immersive learning program

Now that we’ve looked at why immersive learning is effective, you might be interested in how you can use it in your organization.

There are several key areas you need to think about when deploying an immersive learning program, including where to start, how to integrate with existing training, the logistics of rolling out the program, and how to increase learner adoption: