For equity, diversity and inclusion leads, student success teams and curriculum decision-makers in Canadian higher education
A student walks into an anti-racism workshop for the third time this year. She already knows the vocabulary — privilege, intersectionality, microaggression — and she can recite it back on a quiz. But ask her to actually recognise privilege playing out in front of her, or to speak up when someone misuses theirs, and she hesitates. This is the gap that a growing number of Canadian equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) teams are trying to close: not a knowledge gap, but a practice gap.
A newly published study out of George Brown College in Toronto set out to test whether virtual reality could help close that gap. Researchers Shawnee Hardware, Christine Quiogue, Melissa Gallo and Michael Avis built a VR anti-racism module using the AI roleplay platform Bodyswaps, then measured what happened when students actually stepped into it. The results, published in Teaching & Learning Inquiry (2026), offer one of the clearest pictures yet of what immersive, avatar-based learning can and can't do for anti-racism education in higher education.
Between July and December 2022, the George Brown College team ran a two-stage, mixed-methods study. Twenty-three students completed a 15-question survey after finishing a VR module called Let's Talk About Race — Recognising Privilege, and 11 of those students went on to take part in follow-up focus groups and interviews.
The module itself is worth describing in some detail, because the design choices matter as much as the results. Students first chose an avatar — one that looked like them or one that didn't — then entered a 360-degree virtual space modelled on a real location at the college. Inside, two characters, Abeeku and Nola, acted as coaches, guiding students through scenarios that asked them to recognise privilege, examine bias and identify microaggressions.
Partway through, students switched perspectives entirely: they viewed the same interaction from another character's point of view and had to choose how that character should respond to discrimination. The whole experience, including a pre- and post-assessment and a reflective journal, took about 30 minutes.
Students' backgrounds were genuinely mixed. More than half identified as cisgender women; the group included students who identified as Asian, Black, biracial, white and Métis, and roughly 30% were international students — a share the researchers note closely matches the international student population at Toronto-area institutions. Most had already completed at least one traditional anti-racism workshop as part of their programme, which matters: this wasn't a first exposure to the topic, it was a test of whether VR added something traditional formats hadn't.
The self-reported gains were consistent across almost every measure the researchers tracked.
Eighty-seven percent of students agreed or strongly agreed that they felt more knowledgeable about privilege after completing the module. Ninety-one percent said they came away better able to identify how privilege affects people's access to services. Seventy-eight percent reported feeling aware or very aware of how privilege can limit access for others — a meaningfully more specific and applied form of understanding than simply knowing the definition of the word.
The advocacy numbers are arguably the more interesting finding, because they speak to behaviour rather than comprehension. Seventy-four percent of students said they felt equipped or very equipped to stand up to someone using their privilege to limit another person's access to services. Sixty-five percent agreed or strongly agreed that the module had helped them develop new strategies for educating others about the misuse of privilege.
Share of surveyed students who agreed or strongly agreed with each outcome statement (n=23).
The interview data adds texture the numbers can't. One student described realising, during the module, that a character's parents having post-secondary education was itself a form of privilege she hadn't previously named — and that a conversation with another character about a hidden disability made her rethink what counts as privilege altogether. Another student, reflecting on the module's repeated message that "we all have certain degrees" of privilege, said it helped her see her own position on a spectrum rather than as a fixed label.
"I think that kind of opened my eyes... I knew that they were privileges, but I didn't know that they were textbook privileges."
— Student participant, George Brown College
None of this is a knock on lectures, workshops or textbook-based anti-racism training in general — the researchers are careful to say those formats have real value and have been shown to build historically accurate understanding of race and racism. The issue is narrower and more specific to this kind of content.
Recognising and responding to privilege in the moment is an applied, interpersonal skill, not a knowledge-recall task. The literature the George Brown team reviewed points to a consistent pattern: workshops and lectures tend to be didactic, which limits retention; two-dimensional video produces a smaller shift in attitudes than immersive formats; and passive formats give students little opportunity to rehearse what to actually say or do when they witness privilege being misused. Several of the students in this study made exactly this point unprompted, contrasting the VR module with "sitting on your computer and watching a video" where, as one put it, attention tends to wander.
There's also a safety dimension that's easy to underestimate. Anti-racism conversations are emotionally loaded, and many students — particularly those with less lived experience of racism — are anxious about getting it wrong in front of peers. VR's private, low-stakes format gave students room to make mistakes, reconsider a response and sit with discomfort without an audience. That combination of realism and privacy is difficult to replicate in a classroom discussion, however well facilitated.
A few design choices in the Bodyswaps module stand out as directly responsible for the results, and they're worth calling out for anyone evaluating similar tools.
Avatars did real cognitive work, not just novelty. Students repeatedly described the ability to see the situation from another character's body and voice as central to their understanding — several used the word "empathy" unprompted when explaining why the perspective-switch scenario landed for them.
The coaching layer met students where they were. Abeeku and Nola weren't scripted to assume advanced prior knowledge; the module adjusted based on students' responses, which meant a student encountering the concept for the first time and a student who'd already taken a workshop both had a productive experience.
Reflection was built into the flow, not bolted on afterward. The in-module journal asked students to connect scenario content to their own lives as they went, rather than saving reflection for a separate debrief that many students would skip or rush.
This lines up with a broader body of VR embodiment research the George Brown team drew on. Earlier studies have found that taking on an avatar with a different racial identity can produce a measurable, lasting drop in implicit racial bias, and that VR perspective-taking sustains empathy gains longer than traditional perspective-taking exercises.
The George Brown findings echo that pattern in a real higher education setting rather than a lab: students who didn't choose their own avatar reported that the switch didn't reduce their engagement, and several specifically credited the avatar exchange with helping them notice a form of privilege they hadn't previously connected to themselves, such as physical ability or family educational background.
It's also worth noting what the module didn't rely on to get these results. There was no gamification layer, no leaderboard, no score to chase. The design leaned entirely on realistic scenario-building, coached dialogue and structured reflection — a reminder that the immersive format itself was doing the work, not incentive mechanics layered on top of it.
Full response breakdown for the survey's core knowledge-gain question.
The researchers are refreshingly candid about what didn't fully land, and it's the most actionable part of the study for anyone designing a programme.
Despite feeling more aware and more motivated to act, many students said they still didn't feel equipped with concrete language for how to raise a concern about privilege without a conversation turning defensive or shutting down entirely. One student put it plainly: she wanted "tips and tricks" for addressing privilege with someone else without the fear of hurting their feelings. That's a meaningful distinction — the module built awareness and motivation, but stopped short of rehearsing the harder, more confrontational half of advocacy: the actual conversation.
This points to a design lesson rather than a limitation of VR as a medium. A module focused on recognising privilege is necessarily different from one that rehearses difficult, potentially confrontational conversations about it. Institutions building out a full anti-racism curriculum should treat these as two distinct skills requiring two distinct kinds of practice, with the second building directly on the first.
The study also has real constraints worth naming: a small sample of 23 survey respondents drawn from one institution, a group that had already had some anti-racism exposure, and a principal researcher who taught at the same college as her participants (a risk the team addressed by having a separate researcher lead recruitment and quantitative data collection). None of this undermines the findings, but it does mean the results describe a promising direction rather than a settled conclusion — exactly the kind of thing the researchers themselves call for more, larger studies to confirm.
For EDI leads, student success teams and curriculum decision-makers weighing immersive tools against — or alongside — existing anti-racism training, a few practical takeaways stand out from this research.
First, sequence the skills. Use a recognition-focused module like this one as a foundation, then follow it with practice specifically built around the harder, more confrontational skill of raising a concern in real time. Treat them as two stages of the same curriculum, not one module trying to do both jobs.
Second, don't treat VR as a stand-alone intervention. The strongest results in this study came from a module embedded in a broader programme, with faculty involvement in developing the content and scenarios, and with follow-up interviews and discussion built around the experience. A structured learning pathway — preparation, practice, reflection and assessment — gets more out of the technology than a one-off simulation. Bodyswaps' pedagogy framework is built around exactly this kind of pathway, and its AI coaching adapts to each learner's starting point in the way Abeeku and Nola did in this study.
Third, plan for the technical and access realities. The researchers flag cost and device access as genuine barriers to scaling VR-based anti-racism education, particularly for reaching students who might benefit most. Institutions considering this route should think early about desktop or mobile alternatives so a headset requirement doesn't become an equity barrier in an equity programme.
This study adds a specific and useful data point to a growing body of research on immersive learning in higher education. It doesn't claim VR replaces facilitated conversation, community-building or the harder institutional work of addressing racism — the authors are explicit that it doesn't.
What it does show is that when avatars, coaching and reflection are combined deliberately, students report a more layered, more applied understanding of privilege than they had going in, and a stronger sense that they can act on that understanding. For institutions serious about moving anti-racism education from something students can define to something they can practise, that's a meaningful signal worth building on. Bodyswaps' higher education employability solutions are built on the same pathway approach used in this study.
There's also a distinctly Canadian dimension worth flagging for institutions in this country specifically. Several students in the study connected their reluctance to speak up about privilege to what one described as a "Canadian" instinct toward politeness and not wanting to make others uncomfortable — a dynamic that can quietly blunt anti-racism advocacy even among students who are motivated to act.
A module that lets students rehearse a difficult conversation privately, before they have to have it in front of classmates or colleagues, addresses that instinct directly rather than asking students to simply override it. For EDI teams designing programming for Canadian campuses, that's a specific, culturally grounded reason to consider where immersive practice fits alongside more traditional facilitation.
Can virtual reality really teach students about privilege?
Yes. A 2026 study at George Brown College found that 87% of students felt more knowledgeable about privilege after a 30-minute VR module, and most said the module helped them understand privilege better than they had before.
Is VR anti-racism training more effective than traditional workshops?
Research suggests VR can add something traditional workshops often miss: active practice. Students in the study said VR kept them engaged in a way that watching a video and answering questions did not.
How long does a VR privilege training module take?
The George Brown College module took about 30 minutes to complete, including a self-assessment, guided scenarios and a reflective journal.
Does VR training replace facilitated anti-racism conversations?
No. Researchers found students still wanted more guidance on how to have hard conversations about privilege. VR works best as one part of a wider anti-racism programme, not a stand-alone fix.
→ See how Bodyswaps supports higher education employability and equity programmes
→ Explore the pedagogical framework behind Bodyswaps modules
→ Learn how AI coaching personalises feedback for every learner
→ Browse the full scenario library for existing anti-racism and DEI content
→ Book a demo to see how a pathway-based approach could work for your institution
→ Try Bodyswaps to explore the platform first-hand
Hardware, Shawnee, Christine Quiogue, Melissa Gallo, and Michael Avis. 2026. "Let's Talk About Race: The Use of Virtual Reality in Improving Higher Education Students' Understanding of Privilege." Teaching & Learning Inquiry 14: 1–22. https://journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/index.php/TLI/article/view/81277
Banakou, Domna, Parasuram D. Hanumanthu, and Mel Slater. 2016. "Virtual Embodiment of White People in a Black Virtual Body Leads to a Sustained Reduction in their Implicit Racial Bias." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 601. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00601/full
Herrera, Fernanda, Jeremy Bailenson, Erika Weisz, Elise Ogle, and Jamil Zaki. 2018. "Building Long-Term Empathy: A Large-Scale Comparison of Traditional and Virtual Reality Perspective-Taking." PLoS ONE 13(10): e0204494. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0204494
, Razan, Elizabeth Gdanski, Jooeun Kim, Julianne Le, Amy Lopez, Azmina Panjwani, Allyson Tong, and Gloriana Wilson. 2024. "The Use of Virtual Reality for Student Training on Bias and Microaggressions." Journal of Occupational Therapy Education 8(1): 1–13. https://encompass.eku.edu/jote/vol8/iss1/6/
Usher, Alex. 2022. "Ontario Colleges (yes, again)." Higher Education Strategy Associates. https://higheredstrategy.com/ontario-colleges-yes-again/