Exploring Virtual Reality for Religious Education in Real-World Settings

Research and design of virtual reality (VR) applications for educational contexts often focus on science-related subjects and evaluate knowledge acquisition while overlooking other subjects like religious education or ‘what actually happens’ when VR is used in real-world settings. Our article combines both and presents two VR applications, Blessed Spaces and VR Pastor, designed for individual experiences in (Protestant) religious education. We deployed the applications in a real-world setting, an out-of-school learning centre. Surprisingly, the applications mediated social engagement between students. Our findings challenge traditional notions of social experiences in VR-supported education and call for more research in real-world settings.

Conference paper