Using Meta Quest Headsets in Education: 3 Powerful Ways Educators Can Get Started

Louise Jones October 27, 2025

As immersive learning continues to transform classrooms around the world, more schools and colleges are beginning to explore the potential of Meta Quest headsets in education. Affordable, wireless and surprisingly easy to set up, Meta Quest devices are quickly becoming one of the most accessible entry points into Virtual Reality for teachers who want to deliver richer, more interactive and immersive learning experiences.

In this post, we’ll explore why Meta Quest is such a strong fit for the classroom and highlight three great ways educators can start using Meta Quest headsets for impactful learning today.

Why Use Meta Quest Headsets in the Classroom?

Meta Quest (formerly Oculus Quest) has become one of the most widely adopted VR headsets in education because it is:

• Wireless and highly portable – no gaming PC required
• Cost-effective compared to other enterprise headsets
• Easy to manage at scale via Meta Quest for Education
• Supported by a growing ecosystem of learning apps
• Ideal for content created with ThingLink and other immersive authoring platforms

When combined with immersive technologies like ThingLink, teachers can go beyond passive 360° viewing and design hands-on active, inquiry-based learning in VR. 

Research-Driven Results

Don’t just take our word for it; we have curated a collection of over 40 peer reviewed research papers which provide evidence of the effectiveness of ThingLink’s annotation and creation tools for virtual reality and mixed reality!

Read the featured research here.

3 Great Ways to Use Meta Quest Headsets for Impactful Learning

1. Take Students on Virtual Field Trips and Cultural Experiences

Virtual tours created with ThingLink and accessed through Meta Quest headsets allow learners to “visit” locations that would normally be out of reach. These could include UNESCO heritage sites, museums, laboratories, workplaces, and natural environments.

Use cases:

• Geography and environmental science fieldwork
• History and culture explorations
• Historical events
• Real-world contexts and global affairs
• Modern foreign language immersion

For Greater Impact and Powerful Learning

Bring back the wonder in learning! Crucially, with accessible information contained within guided hotspots, voiceovers, and layered media inside the scene, students interact with the experience. This is proven to lead to far deeper student engagement and knowledge retention than just a static video or 360° experience alone.

Educator Actionable Steps! Check out the ThingLink 360° Media Creation Tools

• Use the ThingLink 360 Library for a catalogue of scenes you can clone giving you copyright free access. 
• Create a highly visual engaging 360° image using the AI 360° image generation tools in ThingLink. This is perfect for creating artistic impressions of literary and historical scenes.
• Select the scene you wish to use and add hotspots with layers of multimodal information, questions and polls.
• Scaffold the lesson. Planning for the expedition or experience, peer based discussion and project based learning approaches underpin and enable the experience to be more impactful. 

Read more at this overview of ThingLink VR in our support center. 

2. Teach Career Pathways and Work-Based Learning Through Realistic Simulations

Career exploration becomes more meaningful when students step inside the real world of work. Meta Quest and ThingLink make it possible to create safe and fully guided VR tours of factories, hospitals, engineering labs, hotels, airports, or construction sites – all without needing to arrange a costly and logistically tricky physical visit. Add a scenario based learning experience for soft skills development. 

Benefits:

• Supports career frameworks internationally.
• Widens access for learners increasing access to inaccessible places.
• Encourages self-paced discovery and curiosity.
• New opportunities for decision based and critical thinking soft skills.

These real world experiences help students see themselves in future roles, improving contextual understanding, confidence and aspiration.

See it in action: Explore the interactive 360° tour of Vaisala’s innovative campus and R&D center below!

Educator Actionable Steps! ThingLink Creation Tools for 360° Image Creations

In addition to the 360° media library and AI 360° Image Generation, ThingLink offers a Pano to 360 Tool to enable anyone, (yes anyone!) to create a 360° photosphere from a mobile device panoramic image

Once the images are converted into 360° photospheres, you can annotate with layers of information to create an interactive virtual environment.

Why not work with local businesses and industries to create shareable localised VR experiences?

Go Further to Increase Student Engagement

Use ThingLink Scenario Builder to create micro learning style situations, simulations and scenarios. The outcomes can align with assessments using engagement data for individual learner metrics. The example Barista course below shows this in action!

3. Create Student-Generated VR Projects for Deeper Learning

Once students become comfortable exploring educational experiences, the next step is creating their own VR resources. With smartphones or 360° cameras, plus ThingLink’s browser-based editor, learners can build interactive VR environments that demonstrate understanding, storytelling and creativity and then view them in Meta Quest.

Project ideas:

• Student-led museum or gallery exhibitions
• Curate a school art project or display
• Local history or community storytelling
• Interactive science investigations
• Peer-to-peer teaching projects

This approach transforms students from content consumers into content creators driving collaboration, reflection and digital competency.

Here’s the steps created by ThingLink Certified Trainer Claudia Fisanotti: 

Claudia’s Interactive Guide for Students to Create the Perfect Expedition:

Why Meta Quest + ThingLink Is a Perfect Match for Immersive Education

Together, Meta Quest and ThingLink empower schools to deliver immersive, inclusive and personalised VR learning without technical barriers.

Meta Quest brings: 

• High quality VR hardware

• Unthethered mobility

• Classroom scaleability

• An affordable entry point

ThingLink adds: 

• Easy no-code creation tools

• Interactivity and assessments

• Secure sharing and analytics

• Curriculum alignment

Ready to Get Started?

If your school, college, or district is exploring Meta Quest in education, ThingLink offers:
– Simple content creation for teachers
– Student authoring workflows
– Device-friendly playback in Meta Quest