From Myths to Principles: Navigating Instructional Design in Immersive Environments
Part 7 Myth: Immersion creates empathy

I’ll be the first to point out that my blog posts are not published regularly. As I’ve mentioned before, this series is an updated version of an older series. But these first four myths are mostly ground I’ve covered before. Additionally, since the myths are just basic lies, it’s really hard to muster the motivation to write about them AGAIN.

Every time I have a difficult project, I weigh up working on it versus cleaning the toilet: which would I rather do? Yo, the toilet is pretty clean. So…these blog posts have not been winning that decision.

I’m truly in the dark part of the woods on this entire topic.

But what makes me continue?  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  

The lies keep being repeated. 

In the past week [EDIT: I wrote this on February 27, 2025], I’ve heard:

• In a sales pitch to a school to use VR, that there are (proven?) tangible learning outcomes.

• When learners were using VR headsets, engagement happened.

I’m reminded of a baseball quote that I used to motivate my team when they were having really long hard days at work:

You’ve got to suit up for them all. 

I take from this, that choosing to enter the arena is more important than the outcome of the arena.  I may loose the war against false, malicious, money-making claims about XR in education, but the important point is that I chose to speak out.

So here I go, suiting up for our final myth of this series: Immersive experiences are empathy-generating experiences. Here we go.