Hands-on Extended Reality Education

XR is moving from novelty to necessity in education, with better hardware, rising demand for digital-first teaching, and generative AI driving adoption. The biggest barrier is costly, subject-specific content. FruitXR tackles this with an AI-native, no-code platform that lets educators generate immersive training content quickly and affordably. Starting with hands-on skills like plumbing, we’re proving how XR can scale across education—making immersive learning as easy to create as a slide deck.

XR in Education

In recent years, extended reality (XR) in education has moved beyond novelty to become a tool for reshaping how knowledge is delivered and absorbed. Schools, colleges and universities are using XR to create immersive learning environments in a wide range of subjects.

While augmented reality (AR) is supplementing textbooks and lesson plans—turning static material into interactive experiences that deepen student engagement— mixed reality (MR) is creating shared spaces where learners and educators interact with physical and digital content, blurring classroom boundaries and reshaping how education is delivered.

Rather than simply adding “wow factor,” XR is being adopted to bridge theory and practice, increase experiential learning, and support new pedagogical approaches that prioritise active participation and deep understanding.

Historically, XR has gained adoption in areas where its value is clear—such as building muscle memory, safely simulating hazardous environments, or providing access to locations and equipment that would otherwise be out of reach.

As hardware has improved and high-quality, bespoke content has been invested in, XR has demonstrated its value in specialised, high-skill domains and is now beginning to gain wider traction as a mainstream tool for everyday learning and productivity.

Hardware improvements, educators’ demand for better technology, and generative AI - all driving XR adoption 

The key drivers of XR’s growth in education include:

1. Frequent hardware releases and better distribution – Devices are maturing, with newer models tempting upgrades and greater choice on the market driving down costs. This makes ROI decisions simpler, while “one-stop shops” are winning market share by bundling hardware, delivery, storage, charging, and basic content into clear, transparently priced packages.

   
   

2. Educators’ want (and need) technology – Schools, colleges, universities, and training providers increasingly value digital-first teaching. We’ve moved beyond early pilots to a stage where Learning Technologists and other champions are driving adoption and sharing best practices. Constraints on physical space and the need to equip students with real-world digital literacy are also pushing demand.

   
   

3. Generative AI is reducing content cost – Creating 3D content has historically been expensive, but generative AI is making it faster, easier, and more affordable.

The Content Creation Barrier

In 2025, the XR landscape is evolving. For many organisations, the initial hurdle of hardware investment has shifted into a new challenge: the struggle to find valuable, continuing, utility-driven content. As a result, XR devices—funded through grants, donations, or other means—are often left idle despite being present in schools, colleges, and universities across the UK and US.

At FruitXR, our conversations with educators highlight both the enthusiasm for immersive learning and the barriers that remain. Chief among these is the high cost of producing quality, technically sophisticated, subject-specific content:

• Commissioning bespoke content from Unity or Unreal Engine specialists is often prohibitively expensive.

  
  

• Upskilling staff to create 3D assets and XR experiences from scratch using existing software isn’t realistic—these remain specialist skills, far beyond what most educators can acquire through short training sessions.

This is FruitXR’s value proposition. Our AI-native, no-code and DIY platform is built to break down the cost barrier by making content creation faster and more accessible. From a simple natural language prompt, educators can generate a first draft of training content in minutes—opening the door to scalable, affordable immersive learning.

The real challenge lies in making sure this content isn’t just quick to produce, but is also high quality, flexible and fit for substituting into lesson plans and teaching environments.

The growing use of XR for hands-on skills development

XR for Hands-on Skills

When considering the best applications of extended reality (XR) today, healthcare comes to mind for its transformative role in medical training, surgical planning, and patient care amongst well funded organisations. XR enables surgeons to rehearse complex hands-on procedures in virtual environments, while students can study anatomy through observing and manipulating immersive 3D models. From a care perspective, XR also supports soft-skills training, helping practitioners build exemplary communication habits.

The ability to safely simulate high-stakes scenarios and build knowledge of processes while reducing costs and risks makes XR a natural fit for the healthcare sector and others.

Starting with the Skilled Building Trades

With FruitXR’s founders coming from the construction and PropTech industries, skilled building trades were the natural choice for stress-testing the platform—giving us a way to explore both the opportunities and challenges of applying XR to technical programmes and procedural, hands-on skills training.

Through conversations with vocational colleges in the UK, we identified plumbing as the strongest candidate for our first pilot project in procedural XR learning, which we are now developing in partnership with a prominent group of colleges.

While plumbing has some product requirements unique to the trade, there is also substantial overlap with the needs of many other academic and vocational courses from an XR and software development perspective.

What’s the future for plumbing education?

Focusing on this niche has enabled us to develop the FruitXR platform around a clear, expandable use case, while laying the foundations for adaptation into other fields.

Our goal is simple: to reduce friction in complex XR development by integrating AI throughout the workflow—so that anyone can design and build interactive, immersive training scenarios as easily as creating a slide deck.

Looking Ahead

The direction is clear: as generative AI advances, XR content creation will only become faster and more affordable—and education stands to benefit the most.

At FruitXR, we’re excited to be accelerating this trend. By combining generative AI with intuitive tools, we’re lowering the barriers to immersive learning and applying it where it’s needed most. And we’re just getting started.

Are you teaching hands-on skills?

Tell us about your aspirations and we’ll see if we can help. Email: hello@fruitxr.com