From novelty to practicality: Stakeholder-driven design & deployment needs for VR adoption in post-primary education

Despite widespread enthusiasm for Virtual Reality (VR) in education, its adoption in post-primary schools remains limited by uncertainty over curricular integration, design requirements, and practical deployment considerations. This article reports on a three-phase, mixed-methods participatory study involving 114 co-designers, including post-primary students, parents, post-primary school teachers, subject experts, and VR practitioners. Across the three phases, we conducted co-design brainstorming sessions, semi-structured interviews, administered pre- and post-intervention surveys, and collected in-app interaction metrics to identify the design and deployment requirements for VR in post-primary schools. In Phase One, we identified stakeholders’ deployment needs, capturing the socio-technical conditions required for viable classroom integration. In Phase Two, we identified the design requirements through evaluation of an initial prototype. Finally, in Phase Three, we evaluated an advanced prototype with a broader cohort of stakeholders to assess the extent to which the identified needs and requirements supported educationally meaningful and practically deployable VR experiences.