Home/Sec. 04 · Teaching/Student Work
Programs, studios, and projects where students learn by making: designing in virtual reality, prototyping with 3D printers, building empathy through simulation, and taking design out of the classroom and into the world.
Created at Oklahoma State University to offer advanced training in VR, AR, and AI. With flexible online and onsite options, it includes research and design thesis tracks and an accelerated master's pathway, preparing graduates for leadership in academia, industry, and digital innovation.
The PeTe (Peer Teaching) Mentors Program fosters student retention, collaboration, and belonging through peer-led workshops and cross-year interactions, enhancing the educational experience with innovative leadership.
Partnerships for Excellence in Technology & Environmental-Design gives students real-world experience through internships facilitated by the Mixed Reality Lab, pairing them with industry professionals who mentor and collaborate on projects during the regular semester.
International collaboration, including partnerships with institutions in Mexico, and educational trips to cultural and design hubs like London and Paris that give students hands-on learning experiences in a global context.
Experiencing architecture beyond the classroom connects theory to practice: visits to architectural exhibitions and iconic sites like Crystal Bridges Museum by Moshe Safdie inspire creativity and real-world understanding.
Students explore the UN Sustainable Development Goals and use them as a foundation to design and develop VR and AR applications, leveraging immersive technologies to address global challenges and drive meaningful social impact.
In these design studios, students use VR for design exploration and for design critiques, giving reviewers the ability to experience the spaces students designed.
Exploring AR in design presentations: students used a mobile application to visualize a piece of furniture in augmented reality.
Students design and 3D print a light fixture for a dorm room, experiencing the concept-to-completion workflow and achieving a tangible final outcome of the product they designed.
Students designed a piece of furniture and 3D printed it. Printing prototypes lets students verify whether the physical properties of a virtual 3D model work in the real world.
A transformation in how students approach drafting: the shift from manual boards to iPads and Procreate reflects industry practice, enhances creativity, allows real-time revisions, and significantly improves sketching skills.
Designing a house for two older adults, students learn the empathic design process, using tools such as the G.E.R.T. age-simulation suit to develop empathy before designing.
Students developed and tested solutions in virtual reality, applied Universal Design principles, and visited the Oak Creek co-housing community in Stillwater, OK.
The first project a design student undertakes. In one iteration, grouped students designed for two students from different cultural backgrounds, such as Korean, Japanese, Nigerian, Indian, and Mexican.
Students designed a chair and modeled it using corrugated cardboard. The chair was featured by the OSU Sustainability Office.
An advanced digital visualization course introducing parametric design, digital fabrication, and real-time spatial simulation through the tools being used in industry.
Covering residential and commercial design, students build a foundation in BIM along with virtual visualization techniques through stereoscopic rendering and other plugins.
As internship coordinator, Tilanka teaches three sequential courses: Professional Practice, Pre-Internship, and a structured summer Internship course completed during a student's junior year.
Conducted in the Immersive Visualization Lab at the University of Missouri-Columbia: students presented schemes on a large immersive screen with VRML models, while reviewers recorded comments through online critique forms on their own devices.