Interdisciplinary Collaboration Approaches on Undergraduate Virtual Reality Technology Projects

Educational approaches must keep pace with the rapidly advancing state of technology so that students have the necessary skills for the modern workforce. Computer science (CS) education presents an interesting cross-section of challenges to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education to explore the effects of alternative teaching methods. Our undergraduate program has been working on these educational challenges for several years. We have found project-oriented studio classes with computing and design students collaborating on emerging technology projects lead to positive outcomes. This paper presents our current cross-class collaboration method along with student surveys and final presentation results. It is a necessary class structure to successfully educate future developers and designers, and we wish to share our experiences with the larger STEM educational community.