DEMO
Julie Munoz-Najar
This poster presents a VR 360 educational project that uses immersive storytelling to deepen student understanding of housing inequities in Champaign, Illinois. Designed for social work education, the experience combines two local housing expert interviews paired with 360-degree video of mix types of community housing, delivered through Meta Quest headsets. The goal is to help learners engage housing not only as a policy issue, but also as a lived and place-based human experience shaped by structural conditions – both public and private.
The project sits at the intersection of immersive technology, learning, and human experience. Its instructional design scaffolds students through preparation, immersive observation, and critical reflection on themes including redlining, environmental justice, community context, and advocacy. By situating learners within local environments while integrating expert perspectives, the experience aims to make complex housing realities more visible, and concrete.
Rather than reporting outcome data, this poster shares the design rationale, technical workflow, pedagogical approach, and early implementation model for an immersive learning tool intended to prepare students for more informed and empathetic engagement with housing-related social issues. The project contributes to interdisciplinary conversations about how immersive computing can support justice-oriented education and expand the ways students encounter and engage with community knowledge.