The ‘spotlight’ insights series invites winners from the 6th International VR Awards to discuss their achievements and revisit the journeys that earned them the honour of raising one of our prestigious trophies aloft on stage at de Doelen, Rotterdam. This week we are joined by a company that had the rare honour of lifting two! Immerse scooped our VR Education and Training of the Year and Innovative VR Company of the Year awards.
The Immerse Origin Story
The idea for Immerse was born in a Syrian refugee slum in 2017. Three years of full immersion in the Middle East while working with local NGO partners had made future Immerse founder Quinn Taber conversationally fluent in Arabic. It also made him keenly aware of how inherently social the nature of language learning is.
He knew firsthand that immersion was the key to learning a language fluently, but also that moving abroad to master a language was an opportunity out of reach for most of the world’s people.
Around the same time, VR technology was on the rise, and Quinn found himself wondering…
“What if virtual reality could be used for good to democratize language immersion for learners around the globe?”
Soon after, Quinn moved back to California, raised angel investment from social impact investors, and started Immerse with three co-founders who shared a vision to cultivate human connection by making language immersion accessible to everyone.
The Evolution of a Mission
The reason immersion is key to language learning is because human brains are inherently set up to learn language through environmental and social context. This makes social VR an ideal place for learning. In fact, studies have demonstrated that language learners understand new vocabulary better and remember it longer when they learn it in VR as opposed to in traditional classroom contexts.
And not only does VR provide the ideal environment for language learning, its virtual nature means that it can be accessed anywhere there is internet. A language immersion experience can be brought to any corner of the globe. VR opens access to effective language education even to those unable to travel to another country due to cost, disability, family obligations, work, visa restrictions, or, as Immerse soon realized, pandemic restrictions. Thus, language immersion in VR can truly democratize effective language learning.
Recognizing the unparalleled potential of a live VR language education app grounded in research, Immerse pulled together a team and built a VR environment where learners could move around inside virtual spaces together, interacting naturally with objects in the environment and with one another. They created settings like an airport and a park and stocked them with movable, interactive objects so learners could engage in real-life language interactions such as going through airport security or buying lunch from a food cart.
In their quest to offer the most effective language immersion possible, Immerse hired in-house education and language learning experts and partnered with researchers from universities around the world. Now, product development, education, and business operations all work together holistically to achieve Immerse’s ultimate goal of cultivating human connection and increasing access to language immersion.
This platform was initially used to support language schools around the world. Suddenly, students were able to experience authentic language immersion without the necessity of travel. Immerse made it possible for them to experience the language they were learning in an authentic context and use it to genuinely communicate about the experiences they were having.
Gradually, the Immerse team realized that they had the unique capacity to grow language immersion via virtual reality better than anyone, thanks to their expertise, resources, and experience in the industry. They restructured their language school relationships into referral partners, continued bolstering their research partnerships, and launched the first direct-to-consumer language immersion platform in the Metaverse.
Immerse is committed to continuously iterating the product, introducing new features, and launching new languages.
2022 Innovative VR Company of the Year
Immerse is hugely honored to be a winner of not one, but two 6th International VR Awards in 2022. Being named the 2022 Innovative VR Company of the Year by AIXR is a particularly significant distinction. We existed before the metaverse became a mainstream conversation – and even before Facebook rebranded to Meta. So to be recognized for the work we have done over the past five years to get where we are now validating our mission of cultivating human connection.
When Immerse was first nominated for the VR Awards, everyone was thrilled. Quinn initially planned to attend in person, but the Immerse executive team was in the middle of spearheading a major transition so, to his disappointment, he was not able to leave.
Immerse co-founder and Chief Growth Officer Christian Rowe got in touch with Alex Meland (aka Alex VR), co-host of the Between Realities podcast, through LinkedIn and asked if he would be willing to accept an award on our behalf just on the off chance that we ended up winning.
When Immerse won the VR Education and Training of the Year award, Alex graciously took the stage, read the acceptance speech Christian had messaged him that morning, and accepted the award on our behalf.
Everyone at Immerse was grateful for the award, and to Alex for representing us so well. As our team continued to tune into the VR Awards show, we did not expect to also win Innovative VR Company of the Year across all the categories! Our team was jumping up and down across our remote offices as Alex smoothly ad libbed a second acceptance on our behalf.
Immerse is excited about the distinction from AIXR and how it positions us as a key leader in the metaverse moving forward. As Christian Rowe wrote in the acceptance speech,
“Immerse is grateful to be building a redemptive and meaningful use case for social VR technology in the metaverse. Thank you to all the judges and the Awards team for this incredible recognition. The best days are still ahead of us. Thank you!”
Conclusion
The enthusiasm of Immerse’s Members has continued to boom since Immerse launched the first live VR Spanish language immersion program in July 2022 with plans to launch French, English, and desktop access in 2023. Groundbreaking research findings have also been pouring in through studies conducted by Immerse research partners, assuring us that we are achieving our goal of cultivating human connection via social VR technology.
Immerse was named Meta’s #1 language education partner in 2022 and is the only VR app across all VR devices that offers live, instructor-led language classes for a community of thousands of Members living across the globe.
Immerse is confident that in the coming years we will see a steady increase in other metaverse education apps as awareness grows of the incredible potential of social VR technology to improve learning outcomes and human connection. Immerse is proud to help lead the way.
The VR Awards will return to de Doelen, Rotterdam for the second time as the 7th International VR Awards ceremony takes place 30 November 2023. Be a part of the celebration and grab tickets here. For all the latest awards news, including nominations, register interest here.
