After the success of our VR Haunted House Project in my Spartan Tech Squad course, I started brainstorming ways that I could incorporate a VR project into our AVID classroom.  For those that are unfamiliar to AVID, AVID is a program whose goal is to “close the achievement gap by preparing all students for college readiness and success in a global society”.  What does that look like in a middle school classroom?  Basically, the AVID elective teachers and tutors provide students support by teaching them organization and critical reading/writing skills, monitoring their grades, facilitating weekly tutorials to assist in their content classes, and introducing them to colleges and universities.  It’s a program in which I have completely and utterly fallen in love.  It’s amazing to see the progress of these students over the two years in middle school.  I love the stories of students who were C and D students who have gained the skills to become A and B students.  More importantly, I love hearing stories from our feeder high school on how these students are doing in high school and where they plan to attend college.  It’s an amazing program.

Recently, I realized that our AVID students had been doing a lot of “work” work.  They had been participating in their weekly tutorials and binder checks, they had completed a research-based college presentation and participated in several in-depth critical reading and writing activities.  Don’t get me wrong – all of that stuff is great.  However, I try to be very cognizant of the fact that AVID is their elective class.  It is their “fun” class and yet they are still choosing to be in a rigorous program.  So, I felt it was time for our students to take a “mini-break” but still focus on something that was relative to the AVID elective class.

Just a few weeks ago, our AVID students had completed their research-based college presentations.  They were good – seriously, so good for 7th grade students.  It was about this time that my Spartan Tech Squad students completed their VR Haunted House projects.  The VR Haunted House Project was such a success with my Spartan Tech Squad class that I wanted to incorporate it into AVID as our “fun” activity and I realized it would work perfectly as a follow up to their presentation.  In addition to this, it also gave me the chance to develop a HyperDoc and take the VR project to a more rigorous and reflective level.

Interested in this project…?  Check it out below!

College Virtual Reality Project

Click HERE to make your own copy.

Objective: Students will create a virtual reality design of a college that they have researched.

Groups: Individual or Small Groups (2-3 Students)

Tasks: Students will:

• Research a college and/or university to find maps, photos, and 360 views of the college.
• Research specific buildings and landmarks within the college/university.
• Create a virtual reality design of the college/university via Cospaces.
• Reflect on the difficulties that were presented when designing their college/university.
• Reflect on what they have learned while designing their college/university.

View the template and a sample below:

College VR HyperDoc Template (Link)

Student Samples (x) (x)

Overall, our AVID students really enjoyed this project.  There were definitely times in which they were frustrated as they learned a new program (Cospaces) but it was an excellent way to teach perseverance.  More importantly, our AVID students continued to learn about the college and/or university in a way that did not feel like work – it was just fun!

Have you done any VR projects in your classroom?  How might you modify this HyperDoc for your classroom?  Share in the comments below!

To begin, I supplied the students with this template:

Click HERE for link.

The students were asked to decorate the pennant and write interesting facts around the pennant.  Here are a couple of the results:

They turned out great!  It was such a fun, but easy (and techy!) assignment for my AVID students to complete.

Feel free to use and modify in your own classrooms!