STEM education can sometimes feel abstract or distant for students who do not always find it easy form connections between their STEM learning and their everyday lives or future career prospects. This paper explores how immersive virtual industry tours, created through 360° video, can help make those connections more tangible by allowing students to access regional industry settings to experience high-end innovation without leaving the classroom. By capturing authentic footage of activities within engineering and manufacturing companies and embedding interactive elements through the ThingLink learning environment platform, the project at hand sought to contextualise STEM concepts and highlight their application in real-world practice.

The pilot phase was carried out with senior cycle post-primary students (15 to 18 years old) in Ireland, aligned to the newly developed Leaving Certificate Engineering specification and integrated into the DreamBig programme for transition year students. Teachers participated in a two-day professional development programme, combining direct exposure to industry with training and thought sharing focusing on the use of immersive resources and classroom lesson plans. The 360° tours were then used to introduce theory and practical skills in areas such as digitalisation and automation, enabling students to link classroom activities such as parametric modelling and coding to authentic industrial processes.

Feedback, based primarily on teacher discourse and reflections, indicates that the immersive resources enhanced student engagement, prompted richer questioning, and supported stronger connections between theoretical learning and real-world applications. While the findings are preliminary, the work highlights the potential of immersive video to provide a low-barrier, high-impact means of contextualising STEM education, particularly in contexts where direct industry engagement is limited. This approach not only supports the goals of Irish curriculum reform but also opens new pathways for integrating digital media into project-based and interdisciplinary STEM learning.

Keywords: Applied STEM, 360-degree video, immersive learning, regional innovation.