2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This complete evidence-based practice paper presents the instructional design and outcomes of an undergraduate student-led course on Creative App Design in Virtual Reality offered to first-year learners. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a surge in interest about virtual and augmented reality from small tech start-ups to major tech companies such as Apple, Meta, Google, and Microsoft. However, the curriculum at our university has not kept pace with this demand; while there are research groups in our School of Engineering on Virtual Reality (VR) applications, there is only one class on VR targeting upper division students due to its highly technical nature - and it is not regularly scheduled. As VR is a relatively new platform, many universities, including our own, often do not have the resources, teaching platforms, and faculty experience to offer such courses, especially to first-year learners. Fortunately, an experience with a research project in a lab showed us, a group of upper-division STEM students, that entry into VR design doesn’t need to have a high entry bar.

The goal of our Engineering School’s First Year Design program is to provide early learners opportunities to practice engineering as part of a welcoming community while learning critical design skills by positioning upper division undergraduates as experts and teachers. When it comes to VR, there is a large discrepancy in exposure with the platform and thus familiarity and skill varies greatly, ranging from students who own their own headsets to those who have never used one. Our goal is to offer a course that is accessible and engaging to all, regardless of major, so a diverse group of students can work together and use their unique perspectives to solve complex design problems, empowering voices that are often underrepresented in traditional engineering classes. In this conference proceeding, we describe our design of a full 3-unit (9 work-hours per week) class rooted in experiential learning. The course motivates students from diverse backgrounds and disciplines by incorporating playful elements to cultivate a sense of belonging, not only within the class, but also as part of the broader engineering community.

Our course, Introduction to Creative Design in VR, follows a highly structured curriculum that encourages students to develop and apply various skills in VR design while building a sense of community through classroom activities. Each week, learners observe, discuss, participate in, and reflect on design topics such as immersive interaction, lighting, form, perspective, and user-centered design. These discussions prompt learners to think critically about the graphical environments they are creating and how VR experiences align with the app's purpose. In parallel, students begin applying their design thinking with hands-on tools. They start with Blender to create 3D models and assets, then transition to ShapesXR, a spatial design and prototyping software that enables real-time collaborative development. A key milestone is the midterm check-in, known as the "Art Gallery Challenge," where learners combine the two tools to create VR environments that showcase a student-created virtual art piece, made in Blender and curated in ShapesXR. These environments are then stitched together to create a fully virtual art gallery, allowing students to present their work and move through the space to view each other's creations. The course culminates in a team-based final project, where student teams design and deploy an interactive VR application, exercising the technical and professional skills scaffolded throughout the quarter. The apps are "workshopped" with classmates before being pitched for launch during the final presentation, a celebration that allows students to explore each other’s creations.

Since this is a class designed and taught by fellow undergraduate students, it offers a low-stakes environment for learners to practice what it means to be an engineer while being supported by their more advanced peers. Our motivation to teach stems from our direct experience as students which heavily informs the class design; we better understand and empathize with learners’ situations and challenges having recently been in their shoes. Student-teachers act as approachable and empathetic role models, demonstrating that students can soon become engineers and even teach a Design-Build class themselves. This potential was exemplified by a student from last year's class who is now a member of the teaching team.

Data collected over two offerings of the class show that learners significantly improved their confidence and skills not only with the tools used in the course (Blender and ShapesXR), but also in their critical analysis and engineering design thinking. These results not only stem from quantitative survey data, but also the unexpectedly high quality and complexity of the artifacts produced for the midterm and final project challenges. Some students have even outpaced the instructors in mastering ShapesXR, dedicating extra time outside of class simply because they enjoy working with the software. These results, alongside consistent participation and engagement from learners throughout the quarter, show that they genuinely enjoy the class, a necessary ingredient for it to be considered a success.