As the post-pandemic world of education evolves, so will the demand for immersive learning using eXtended Reality (XR). Immersive can change the way we exchange and acquire knowledge with humans or AI-based robots by providing limitless opportunities for hands-on and memorable learning experiences. They offer a variety of innovative educational experiences, but their designs and pedagogies are critical to student learning success. Recent literature, however, emphasizes a general lack of theoretical and methodological rigor in the majority of studies in this field, as well as a lack of learning theories and best practices to guide immersive learning development, as well as a lack of non-validated measures (Natale et al. in British Journal of Educational Technology 51:2006–2033, 2020). The goal of this paper is to investigate how to design, deliver, and evaluate immersive learning using cognitive and motivational theories. Twenty students and twelve teachers from four secondary schools took part. They had all had prior experience with immersive learning. Thematic analyses were performed, and the results yielded 5 design principles (pre-training, specific and timely feedback, interacting with more advanced AI-bots, gamification, tracking learning), 5 effective pedagogies (student preparation, active learning, generative activity, a targeted curriculum, student safety and health), 10 evaluation measures (teacher and digital needs supports, behavioral, cognitive and emotional and agentic engagement), and 4 future research directions.