Technologies
Overview
About Corvallis School District
Corvallis School District is a premier public school district in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, serving students from PK-12. Known for its commitment to community-focused education and innovative programs like EdReady Montana, the district operates a Class A high school dedicated to preparing students for real-world success. By prioritizing safety and hands-on learning, Corvallis ensures its students gain practical skills that translate directly to the workforce and local industry.
Services
The Challenge
Expanding student access to essential vocational skills through VR
In rural Montana, the Corvallis School District sought to provide students with high-quality vocational training in construction and tool safety but faced a unique geographic challenge: a student population spread across a vast region. This spread makes frequent in-person gatherings for hands-on technical labs difficult. Additionally, shop classes carry the highest risk of injury, though serious injuries are rare.
Designing our solution
We designed an immersive VR experience that mirrors the natural flow of a physical shop class, prioritizing safety mastery and critical thinking. Our team worked closely with the client to transform complex construction logic into a gamified educational journey that rewards precision, resource management, and safe tool handling.
Comprehensive Tool Tutorials
We built interactive training modules for four critical construction tools: the circular saw, drill, impact driver, and socket wrench, with the greatest emphasis on the dangerous circular saw. We spent significant time ensuring the tools behaved exactly as their physical counterparts would, reinforcing proper technique and muscle memory. Each tutorial includes informational text, voiceovers, and mandatory practice tasks that require students to demonstrate safe operation and storage techniques. By implementing a minimum “dwell time” on instructional screens, we ensured students couldn’t simply skip through the life-saving material. To ensure full retention, students must pass knowledge quizzes with 100% accuracy before proceeding to the construction phase.
Inclusive Accessibility Framework
We designed the VR environment to support both right and left-handed users. This involved creating custom 3D models and unique interaction points for left-handed power tools, ensuring that every student, regardless of their dominant hand, could practice safe techniques comfortably and accurately.
Engineering & Budget Simulator
Our team designed a complex “shopping” system where students must select materials from six categories, including framing lumber and various plywood types. With over 700 possible combinations, there are only 20 “correct” paths to success. Additionally, students must balance a $350 budget against a calculated strength index. This forces critical thinking within “real” world constraints (aka a limited budget) about material properties. For example, understanding the durability difference between Pine and Oak affects whether the student’s final container survives the bear test.
Developing our solution
Our development focused on creating a realistic, yet engaging simulation of constructing a bear-proof container. Built using the Unity engine for Meta Quest 2 and 3 headsets, the VR experience recreates the important lessons learned in shop class.
Realistic VR Construction Training
After materials are purchased, students apply all the techniques they’ve learned with various construction tools to assemble the bear-proof container. They are led step-by-step through cutting lumber, securing frames, and installing hinges and latches. This hands-on training ensures students understand the physical assembly of a bear-proof container before attempting it in real life.
Bear Attack Animated Simulation
The construction phase culminates in a custom animation where a bear attempts to break into the student’s finished container. The outcome directly reflects the student’s engineering choices, with a pass/fail result based on the selected parts and overall box strength. This visual feedback is a powerful teaching tool that demonstrates the real-world consequences of material selection and assembly quality.
Customized Container Design
To keep students engaged and reward engineering success, we integrated a creative customization module that unlocks once a container survives the bear attack. Successful students can personalize their designs with various colors, patterns, and pictures, with more advanced aesthetic options becoming available as the container’s strength index increases. This gamified reward system not only makes the learning process more exciting but also encourages students to iterate on their designs to achieve the highest possible quality.
