Determining the effectiveness of any educational technology depends upon teachers' and learners' perception of the functional utility of that tool for teaching, learning, and assessment. The Virtual Performance project at Harvard University is developing and studying the feasibility of using immersive technology to develop performance assessments of middle school students' scientific inquiry. This article reports the findings of a series of two studies conducted with US middle school students and their perceptions of the use of immersive virtual environments during assessment. We also present validation data for a newly constructed self-report instrument, the Meaningful Assessment of Learning Questionnaire specifically for Immersive Virtual Environments (MALQ-IVE).