The Dirt on VR’s Future:
How AI Is Supercharging Virtual Learning Experiences

The DIRT on VR’s Future: How AI is Supercharging Virtual Learning Experiences in Higher Education

November 17th, 2025

By Nick Lindquist, Multimedia Developer Lead

When I attended the Augmented and Virtual Reality in Higher Education workshop recently, I was eager to explore how immersive learning experiences can be effectively designed and deployed across higher education. While the session was considerably lighter on technical implementation than I’d hoped, it did deliver on something even more compelling: a look at how AI-infused AR/VR is pushing the field forward. The next generation of immersive learning doesn’t just guide students through static simulations— new AI-fueled XR environments sense, respond, and adapt in real time, turning every interaction into a personalized, data-driven learning experience.

Several years back, before AI had begun rapidly changing the entire university learning landscape, our team at the Learning and Teaching Hub built a VR soil analysis lab for a civil engineering course. The experience allowed learners to practice the lab techniques of using sieves, scales, and testing soil samples safely and confidently before entering the real lab.

However, seeing today’s AI capabilities made me realize how much more that experience could do now. Modern XR systems can:

• Analyze student actions in real time and offer context-aware feedback mid-experiment.
  
• Adapt the simulation dynamically, and generate endless variations of samples or test conditions using generative AI.
  
• Expand accessibility with live captioning, voice control, and multilingual translation.
  
• Feed instructor dashboards with detailed analytics on process accuracy and decision-making trends.

This kind of integration has already begun at higher education institutions around the world, including: 

At the University of Alabama, where the InsightXR & Immersive Learning Analytics project blends AI with XR to track how students interact inside immersive environments, using real-time data to deliver adaptive feedback and personalize the learning experience. 

At the University of Arizona, where a course called AI: The Engine Behind Smart Immersive Systems combines AI-driven design with HoloLens and XR technology , allowing students to build immersive apps that actually analyze and respond to their actions in real time.

And at Purdue, the “Digital Twin & Robotic Automation Center” (DigiTRACKER) is integrating digital-twin frameworks, robotics and AI to build virtual replicas of physical systems and robots — enabling simulation, real-time feedback and advanced testing in mixed reality.

Engineering has always been about building what doesn’t yet exist — testing limits, breaking things, and learning from the debris. AI-infused immersive learning captures that creative chaos and turns it into insight. Students aren’t just navigating through static virtual labs anymore; they’re engaging in real-time experimentation where the system itself observes, adjusts, and learns with them.

Our first-generation VR soil lab helped students get comfortable with tools. The next generation will help them get comfortable with the uncertainty of an actual lab environment —where variables shift, data reacts, and feedback loops evolve dynamically. That’s the real leap forward: immersive learning that mirrors the messy, beautiful reality of engineering, where discovery isn’t scripted, it’s simulated.

_{Author’s Note: This article was drafted with the assistance of a generative AI tool to support wording and formatting; content generated by AI has been reviewed and approved by the author.}

References

Purdue University. (n.d.). Digital Twin & Robotic Automation Center (DigiTRACKER). Purdue Polytechnic Institute. https://polytechnic.purdue.edu/DigiTRACKER

University of Alabama. (n.d.). InsightXR & Immersive Learning Analytics. ADIE Lab, University of Alabama. https://sites.ua.edu/adielab/projects-development

University of Arizona. (n.d.). AI: The Engine Behind Smart Immersive Systems. Responsible AI at the University of Arizona. https://responsibleai.arizona.edu/news/u-fuses-ai-and-immersive-tech-shape-future-learning-and-industry