VISTA – Virtual Immersion for Student Awareness of Climate Change is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral project hosted at OsloMet – Centre for the Study of Professions (SPS). The project explores how VR-supported teaching and immersive learning environments can foster deeper climate-change awareness among lower-secondary students.

Climate change is often presented through facts and data, yet research shows that awareness requires more than cognitive understanding. Students need emotional engagement, contextual experience and a sense of agency to connect learning with real-world challenges.

VISTA therefore investigates whether immersive, VR-enhanced learning experiences can help students not only understand climate change — but feel its urgency and imagine possible actions.

Over the next two years, the project will collaborate with teachers, schools, researchers and VR specialists to co-design and test classroom-ready learning scenarios supported by VR. The main focus is on how presence, interaction and pedagogy work together to shape student awareness in sustainability education.

The core question is simple:
Can VR-supported teaching transform climate change from a topic to be learned —
into an experience to be felt and acted upon?

VISTA aims to contribute to an emerging field where pedagogy, sustainability and technology come together to build future-oriented educational practices.