Situated learning experiences in life sciences education are dominated by laboratory training sessions. A limitation of this approach however is that they can lack correlation with industrial settings where theoretical aspects become applied, interconnected and scaled by orders of magnitude far removed from laboratory settings. Industrial site visits offer one means to bridge this gap, where unique contextual learning can be achieved as students re-evaluate theory through the lens of application, observe dynamic interactions and constraints in large scale industrial processes, and reflect on next stage career outlets and required competencies. However, site visits are often prohibitively resource intensive for many programmes, especially for large student cohorts. Furthermore, for obvious reasons, they are often delivered by the site host as an observational and discursive experience with limited student autonomy for site exploration. The VISTA project thus explored an innovative approach to deliver virtual, interactive industrial site visits and assessment opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of Microbiology.