Abstract Along with the continuous development of multimedia technology and the deepening of teaching information, virtual reality design factors are crucial to enhancing the impact of the teaching experience. The purpose of this paper is to address traditional art education’s transformational needs and develop an art education teaching system that utilizes virtual reality technology. It also uses the eye-tracking instrument to collect student eye movement data, and after preprocessing the data, such as missing data and noisy trajectory points, it counts the results of each eye movement index in the teaching process. The study showed that some of the students’ eye movement indicators during teaching had a strong correlation with the level of cognitive engagement in learning (P<0.05), and there was no covariance between the indicators. Following the implementation of the teaching mode, the students teaching art under multimedia exhibited a significantly higher level of cognitive engagement in learning (9.74 points) compared to those in the traditional teaching mode (7.14 points). Meanwhile, the eye movement experiment found that the difference in students’ attention concentration in the artwork and work introduction sections was not significant (P > 0.05) when the design elements of the teaching interface were paired with the top of the bottom of the picture and the middle size and the top of the picture and the bottom of the picture and the large size. This paper provides references and their significance for related research, as well as the design of a virtual simulation platform for art teaching.