Considerations for VR Integration into Human-Centered Computing Education
Ruchi Sembey, Roberto Martinez-Maldonado, John Grundy · 2026 · ACM Transactions on Computing Education · doi:10.1145/3795531
Summary
This paper investigates the practical considerations that Human-Centered Computing (HCC) educators perceive as important when integrating Virtual Reality (VR) into their teaching. Despite sustained interest in VR as an educational tool—particularly for immersive, perspective-taking experiences that expose students to diverse user needs—its adoption in higher education computing curricula remains limited. The study addresses a clear gap: while prior work has examined technical and student-centered barriers, educators' own perspectives on the holistic set of practical challenges have been underexplored. The researchers recruited 15 HCC educators (12 teachers and 3 learning designers) from two Australian universities through purposeful sampling. Each participant completed a brief questionnaire on demographics and prior VR use, then experienced a 4-minute 360° VR simulation ("A Walk through Dementia") via an HTC VIVE head-mounted display before participating in a semi-structured interview lasting 45–60 minutes. The simulation was framed as a sample learning activity, giving educators a concrete VR reference point for discussion. Interview data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke's approach), coded in NVivo 12.0, with inter-rater reliability testing achieving a weighted kappa of 0.748, indicating substantial agreement. Three themes encompassing 21 distinct practical considerations emerged: (1) Technology Access and Provisioning—equipment quantity and support, affordability, health/safety/comfort; (2) Pedagogical Considerations—VR training and orientation for students and staff, and instructional planning aligned with learning objectives; and (3) VR Design and Sourcing Considerations—how to source curriculum-specific content (build-your-own, outsource, or free-to-use) and experiential design quality requirements including realism, pacing, cultural relevance, and character representation.
Key findings
All 15 educators unanimously raised cost as a prohibitive concern, noting that institutional budget constraints and the lack of funding for teaching assistants compound the resource-intensive nature of VR integration. Health and safety concerns were also raised by all 15, including motion sickness (8 educators), epilepsy or vision-related exclusion risks (4), hygiene concerns around shared headsets, and classroom safety during free-movement sessions. Pedagogically, all 15 educators agreed that staff VR training is essential, while opinion was divided on whether students require formal orientation (10 favored it; 5 felt VR was sufficiently intuitive). Instructional design considerations included curriculum alignment, activity length, sequencing, and the facilitation challenge of orchestrating 20+ students simultaneously wearing immersive headsets. For content, educators preferred outsourcing or using free-to-use content over building their own, citing time, production complexity, and technical resource demands. HCC-specific considerations included: co-designing VR experiences with stakeholders, ensuring cultural relevance and diverse character representation, protecting students' emotional safety given VR's affective power, and managing classroom orchestration in studio-style environments. Seven future research directions were identified: pedagogical facilitation strategies, authentic classroom implementation studies, practice-based educator collaboration, VR design for learner diversity, content sourcing decision frameworks, institutional support structures, and disciplinary comparisons.
Relevance
This paper is relevant to accessibility practice in two distinct ways. First, it positions VR as a powerful empathy-building tool for computing students—helping them understand the lived experiences of users unlike themselves, including people with cognitive impairments, disabilities, or age-related differences. The use of a dementia simulation as the study's VR prompt directly connects to disability awareness education and mirrors approaches relevant to organisations building accessibility training programs. Second, the paper surfaces significant accessibility gaps within VR technology itself: students with epilepsy, visual impairments, motion sensitivity, or cognitive differences may be excluded from VR experiences, raising inclusion concerns that require proactive planning. The study's calls for inclusive VR design—alternative 2D modes, cultural relevance, diverse character representation, emotional safety protocols—map directly onto accessible technology design principles. For practitioners developing accessibility training, the 21 practical considerations provide a concrete checklist for planning VR-based empathy and disability education programs at institutional scale.
Tags: virtual reality · VR education · human-centered computing · experiential learning · pedagogy · empathy · thematic analysis · accessibility in VR · inclusive design
Standards referenced: WCAG