Beyond the Classroom Box:
An Open Source Approach to VR Learning Spaces
What does a meaningful learning environment feel like—not just look like—when we free it from the economical architecture of commodification and return on investment and the disciplinary architecture of schools and lecture halls?
Unlike many commercial XR products shaped by venture capital and gamified metrics, the team-members of Studio für unendliche Möglichkeiten are reimagining not only learning experiences, but where and through what means. The current research project is an open-source , VR-based metaverse infrastructure tailored for education and research. Their process, as well as the theoretical groundwork they are building on, reveals deep transformation tensions and opportunities for education systems in flux. Following we show and tell about design concepts and our research process foreducation in VR that have the potential to reimagine learning design.
Spatial Intentions, Not Spatial Illusions
At the heart of the project is an understanding borrowed from Mick Healey’s 2022 article on physical learning spaces: “Designing learning spaces must begin with institutional values and pedagogical intent.” Virtual environments, much like real ones, are not neutral—they encode expectations, exclusions, and modes of interaction. The Studio’s open-source prototype explicitly resists default metaphors of “classroom in the cloud” or “digital twin campuses.” Instead, they begin with learning objectives like collaborative problem-solving, embodied cognition, or critical reflection, and build spatial affordances accordingly.
For example, instead of a lecture hall replica, a learning module for science is staged on a floating wetland island, where the topography responds to learner input. The space becomes not just a container, but an epistemic tool.
This aligns with Dan Davies and colleagues’ (2013) systematic review of creative learning environments: flexible use of space and time, learner autonomy, and engagement beyond classroom norms were consistently linked to creativity and skill development. Virtual reality, when carefully designed, can operationalize these qualities—allowing new kinds of real learner agency and real co-presence that static educational technology often fails to deliver.
From Stickiness to Flow
The Studio’s metaverse vision draws on Healey’s concept of the “sticky campus”—a place students want to be, even when not required. In virtual space, stickiness becomes a question of flow: do learners return to environments because they are intellectually and socially enriching, or merely because they are gamified?
To address this, the prototype includes modular collaboration zones, dynamically reconfigurable by users. This follows insights from Bligh and Patel (2019) about the need for spaces that are both cognitively and socially integrated. Spatial design must allow for both serendipitous conversation that can then transition into focused concentration—a difficult balance even in physical architecture, let alone digital simulation.
The Studio avoids the temptation to flood the environment with visual spectacle. As Healey warns, educational space is not simply about aesthetic novelty, but functional alignment between spatial qualities and learning processes. Over-designed VR spaces can easily drift into cognitive noise, reinforcing distraction rather than focus, therefore, disrupting flow.
Infrastructure as Ethics
The decision to release the platform as open source is not incidental. As project lead Gloria Schulz emphasizes the importance of accessible, affordable and safe digital tools, especially when they are needed for knowledge sharing and development. In times of budget restrictions expensive, static and non-customizable applications are dangerously limiting the learning and researching processes necessary for new innovations and implementations. This stance echoes concerns raised by Naomi Berman (2020), who critiques the uncritical celebration of “social” learning spaces that ignore how design can marginalize certain learners and not allow self-design and accessibility.
With this in mind, the Studio has begun experimenting with user-driven customizations that accommodate neurodiverse users, including low-stimulation zones, audio captioning layers, and spatial scripting for routine-based navigation. These are not “add-ons,” but foundational choices in the environment’s architecture.
Toward an Architecture of Co-Learning
One of the more radical aspects of the Studio’s work is the integration of co-design practices directly into the software development cycle. Drawing from Jack Mezirow’s theory of transformative learning and Healey’s model of students as partners, they’ve included learners not only as beta testers but as co-architects of modules. In this regard, the Studio works closely with their academic partner HTW, who contribute user-insight, learning design expertise, evaluation and testing, as well as research. Through workshops and co-designed templates with the cooperation partner HTW Berlin, future users will shape both pedagogy and space—moving beyond passive consumption into truely active authorship.
Final Thoughts: Not Just Possible, Necessary
The Studio’s research is timely not because VR is novel, but because traditional learning spaces—digital and physical alike—are increasingly misaligned with the cognitive, social, and ethical needs of diverse learners and that they are far too often shaped by profit-oriented companies. The Studios work suggests that the promise of the metaverse lies not in replication of school architectures, but in their critical unmaking and commons-oriented redesign.
What emerges from their prototype is not a “solution” but an open question, iterated through design: what kind of learning future are we willing to build, and for whom?
For now, the Studio’s answer is clear: one that is open, collaborative, inclusive, and—most crucially—designed as a space for infinite possibility, not control!
Sources referenced:
• Healey, M. (2022). The Design of Physical Learning Spaces in Supporting Learning and Engaging Students on Campus. University of Westminster.
• Davies, D. et al. (2013). Creative learning environments in education—A systematic literature review. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 8(1), 80–91.
• Suzanne Sasaki-Hartstein (2019) – Design philosophies for inclusive and flexible learning spaces.
Image: The Garden of Cosmic Speculation in Dumfries, Scotland, Designed by architect and theorist Charles Jencks and his wife, Maggie Keswick
