Not All Immersive Technologies Are Equal: Bridging Teachers’ Instruction and Students’ Perceived Learning in Immersive Educational Environments

Immersive technologies such as Desktop Virtual Reality (DVR), Immersive Rooms (IR), and fully immersive Virtual Reality (VR) are transforming K-12 education by enabling experiential, multisensory, and participatory learning. Yet their pedagogical impact depends not only on hardware fidelity but on the interplay between technological affordances, instructional design, and learner characteristics. Guided by the Cognitive Affective Model of Immersive Learning (CAMIL), this mixed-methods study examined how these factors jointly shape affordances, challenges, students perceived learning, and self-assessment in authentic classroom contexts. Data were collected from 31 teachers and 252 students across 21 schools using teacher interviews, classroom observations, and student questionnaires. Findings revealed that agency and presence emerged as central affordances but also as potential challenges, depending on lesson design and cognitive load. DVR consistently supported higher perceived learning and stronger links between engagement and self-assessment, while IR showed the weakest outcomes and VR displayed trade-offs between immersion and control. The study proposes a revised CAMIL framework that integrates social co-presence, learner characteristics, and perceived learning as essential components for understanding immersive learning in schools. These results highlight that effective immersion arises from pedagogical orchestration, not technological intensity alone.