Teaching Lived Religion Through XR: The Case of Immersive Religion

Abstract

Immersive learning technologies offer new possibilities for addressing a long-standing challenge in the academic study of religion: how to engage students with lived religious practice without reducing traditions to abstract beliefs or static representations. This extended abstract analyzes the classroom use of Immersive Religion (IR), an immersive digital humanities platform that uses 360-degree video, enhanced interviews, and interactive virtual tours to support participatory engagement with real religious practices and sacred spaces. Implemented across multiple introductory religion courses, IR invites students to act as virtual ethnographers, analyzing the relationships among ritual, place, community, and mediation. Qualitative analysis of student work indicates strong gains in spatial literacy, ritual comprehension, and awareness of cultural context, alongside high levels of engagement and curiosity. At the same time, students consistently articulated the limits of mediated presence, demonstrating critical media awareness rather than uncritical immersion. These findings suggest that immersive media, when intentionally designed and scaffolded, can function not as a substitute for reality but as a bridge between representation and lived cultural encounter.