Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) environments would seem naturally to lend themselves to hands-on approaches to learning, but the success of such virtual “direct experience” depends heavily on the design of interface and interaction techniques. IVR presents surprisingly difficult interface challenges, and the study of interface and interaction design for educational IVR use is just beginning. In this paper, the authors discuss three issues encountered in the creation of an IVR-based educational project: the use of architectural spaces for structuring a sequence of modules, the tradeoffs between metaphorical fidelity and convenience, and the use of IVR in interaction with visualizations of abstract concepts.