Background
Aurora University, a private institution in Aurora, Illinois, has been rapidly expanding immersive technology capacity through its College of Education. The secondary education program has quadrupled enrolment over the past decade, outpacing most US peers at a time of national teacher shortages, and the school operates a growing fleet of VR headsets that students can check out from the library.
The project
Launched in October 2025, the AI Student Classroom Teaching Simulator is the product of an internal Aurora University innovation grant led by Dr. Aubrey Brammar Southall, a secondary education faculty member, and developed in partnership with Iowa-based XR studio VictoryXR. The goal was to give education majors a repeatable, low-risk environment to practice teaching before their formal student-teaching placements — and to provide personalized feedback at a scale the faculty could not deliver manually in rapidly growing classes.
How it works
Teacher candidates put on a standalone VR headset and select a grade band (6–12) and a subject area — science, social studies, English, mathematics, or foreign language. They then find themselves in a virtual classroom in front of 10 AI-driven student avatars, each with its own personality, cultural and linguistic background, and behavioral quirks. Candidates can optionally upload a PDF or slide deck to teach from; the avatars react dynamically, ask spontaneous questions, get distracted, and sometimes push the teacher off on tangents that have to be managed and redirected.
AI stack
Dialogue and reasoning are powered by VictoryXR's avatar platform layered on OpenAI models. The build required multi-agent conversational control — unlike VictoryXR's earlier single-AI experiences such as its cadaver lab or Thomas Edison tutorial, the simulator has to orchestrate 10 concurrent conversational threads without the avatars confusing who is being addressed. The experience also supports bilingual delivery: Aurora University President Dr. Susana Rivera-Mills tested a trial Spanish class in which the avatars responded in both English and Spanish depending on how she addressed them.
Feedback and assessment
At the end of each session, the simulator produces a written performance analysis aligned both to Illinois State Board of Education licensure standards and to Aurora's own relationship-intensive pedagogy framework. Feedback covers questioning technique, real-world connections, classroom management, and how effectively the candidate connected subject content to the specific demographics of the simulated class. Candidates receive a formal report and a separate informal reflection, and can choose to forward either to their faculty supervisor.
Rollout and recognition
Aurora University has made close to 300 VR headsets available through its School of Education and university library for student check-out, and candidates can also use the simulator at home on their own headsets. The program has been nominated for the Illinois Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's Innovation in Teacher Preparation Award, and Southall has presented it at multiple regional conferences. Aurora positions the simulator as preparatory rehearsal for, rather than a replacement for, classroom student-teaching placements — part of a broader strategy to improve graduate confidence and address statewide teacher retention.
