California colleges clamor to adopt virtual reality technology successfully started at ASU

Arizona State University’s partnership with Los Angeles-based Dreamscape Learn is bringing cutting-edge virtual reality technology to higher education learning — with great success. Now, colleges in California are lining up to feature the EdTech company’s immersive learning platform in their biology classes and beyond.

ASU was at the forefront of pairing Dreamscape Learn technology with biology instruction to create its NeoBio courseware in 2020. In the virtual reality labs that accompany Biology 100, for example, students visit an Alien Zoo as part of an emotionally engaging story to apply key biology concepts in order to diagnose and treat an ailing dinosaur-like creature.

Today, ASU employs Dreamscape Learn’s experiences and other adaptive lessons to teach thousands of students a year both in-person and online. There’s Biology 100 for non-STEM majors and Biology 181 and 182 for STEM majors. More ASU classes will soon be launching with the Dreamscape Learn immersive approach including art history and chemistry.

The result for ASU has been an indisputable success at making biology more engaging and relevant and at refining problem-solving skills — whether students intend to major in a STEM-related field or not. ASU students have been reporting higher satisfaction with learning through virtual reality and a customized online component that tracks their success and makes practice more engaging. But the results go beyond the anecdotal — multiple, ongoing ASU-led studies are showing positive impacts on student success.

Now California colleges are adopting Dreamscape Learn for biology instruction and ASU is helping them launch and succeed. Institutions in the Golden State that have adopted the technology within approximately the last year include Merced College, Glendale Community College and Long Beach City College. Other California institutions are in the midst of signing on to use the technology.

Growth is also happening in K–12 schools and universities from New Jersey to Utah to Nevada.

With President Michael Crow’s role in the origin of Dreamscape Learn and ASU’s subsequent success in using this model, ASU wants to help other institutions adopt the technology, said Lisa Flesher, chief of Realm 4 initiatives at ASU.

College officials interested in using Dreamscape Learn most often see the technology first at ASU’s Tempe campus and visit multiple times to meet with ASU faculty and leaders for insights about how it can be best employed in their own locations. Flesher said ASU wants to ensure partners are successful, prompting the university to share advice on everything from curriculum to staffing models to physical build-out.

“In my ideal world I would love to have tens of partners in every single state,” she said. “It’s a medium and a modality that students are gravitating to. It meets them with platforms where students are already choosing to spend time and it informs them in engaging ways.”

Flesher said another powerful benefit of continued growth in Dreamscape Learn use is that software engineers at partner universities can create new virtual reality experiences that can be shared and used by other partners.

Dreamscape Learn CEO Josh Reibel applauds the California universities adopting the technology to create “learning experiences that amaze, inspire and motivate students.”

“We’re a proud Southern California company and thrilled to see Dreamscape Learn taking root across the state,” he said.

Merced College, which serves 17,000 students each year, created a 32-seat Dreamscape Learn-powered classroom that debuted in August 2024 for biology classes. The number of biology sections offered has only grown since then due to the popularity of the classes among students.

The college also built entertainment-focused Dreamscape Learn “free roam” pods that are open for community members to experience. President Chris Vitelli said the publicly available virtual reality experiences may influence enrollment decisions.

“I have no doubt that it creates an environment where people are not only talking about what we’re doing but they’re excited about telling someone that Merced College is finding innovative ways to teach students,” he said.

Vitelli said ASU was a valued strategic partner throughout Merced’s journey from investigating to implementing Dreamscape Learn and optimizing teaching methods to suit it. Though it is too early for major study results yet, Vitelli said that engagement, student success and retention rates are already showing improvements with Dreamscape Learn-powered biology versus traditional biology classes.

“This is actually working for our students and the data is supporting it,” Vitelli said.

Glendale Community College and Long Beach City College have Dreamscape Learn classroom pods and both plan “free roam” pods for entertainment purposes that are open to the public.

Beyond biology instruction, Superintendent/President Ryan Cornner said Glendale Community College faculty are excited to expand use of the technology for chemistry, the humanities, language instruction, public speaking and more. Cornner said his vision is to maximize the college’s investment in Dreamscape Learn and to showcase their virtual reality capabilities to the community as a recruitment tool.

“More than anything this is about making a statement to our students and to our community that we are innovative and relevant and we can bring something to students they’ve never seen before,” he said.

For Walter Parkes, CEO and co-Founder of Dreamscape Immersive, it is clear that the growth of this new approach to teaching and learning is just getting started in California.

“I’ve spent decades in Hollywood engaging audiences through film, and it’s inspiring to see that same power of storytelling transform the learning experience for these students across California — and this is just the beginning,” he said.