Dunwoody College of Technology announced Dunwoody Immersive on 9 September 2026, a dual-credit programme that delivers first-semester skilled-trades courses to Minnesota high school students through virtual reality, without requiring them to travel to a college campus. Two courses run in the pilot: ELTT1101 DC Circuit Fundamentals, worth four college credits, and ARTS1500 Early Global Architecture, worth three.
Coursework is delivered online through Canvas, the college's learning management system. Each course runs 14 to 16 weeks, is self-paced and is taught by Dunwoody-provided instructors. The laboratory component is where the spatial content sits: the college states that lab assignments are built for Meta Quest headsets, which it says currently offer the best experience-to-cost ratio, and that the virtual setting lets students practise, make mistakes and repeat exercises safely. In DC Circuit Fundamentals students work with virtual measurement tools, resistors, diodes and zener diodes to build working circuits, applying Ohm's Law and Kirchhoff's Laws through gamified challenges. Early Global Architecture surveys more than 150 heritage sites worldwide using interactive 3D models, annotated plans and concept animations; course material published by the college covers Renaissance work including Brunelleschi's dome in Florence and a three-dimensional reconstruction of the Plan of St Gall.
The pilot covers six Minnesota school districts and charter schools: Edina Virtual Pathways, Eden Prairie Schools, Wayzata Public Schools, White Bear Lake School District, Avalon School and Hermantown Community Schools. Students who complete a course earn both high school and college credit, and the courses count in the same way as any other dual-enrolment or PSEO option.
The stated rationale is cost. The labs and equipment that skilled-trades instruction requires are prohibitively expensive for many high schools, so few dual-credit options lead into those fields. Dunwoody cites U.S. Department of Education figures that five workers retire from manufacturing, construction and other skilled trades for every two who enter, and that an estimated 2.1 million skilled-trades jobs could go unfilled by 2030. Graco is named among the initiative's supporting partners.
Course pathways feed into electrical engineering, electronics, electrical construction, automation and robotics for the circuits course, and architecture, interior architecture, construction management and cultural studies for the architecture course.
