Students Work to Develop Educational Virtual Reality Game through Internship Program

The College of Coastal Georgia’s XR Education and Innovations Labs (XREIL) has collaborated with the Partnership for Inclusive Innovation (Partnership) Summer Internship program to host two summer interns who are helping to develop a virtual reality game. The Summer Internship program is a statewide public-private collaboration housed at Georgia Tech to provide civic-minded college students from across the nation with hands-on experience working on real-life problems and supporting innovation work.

XREIL is a cutting-edge development group at the College that creates engaging and immersive educational experiences. The interns are working to develop “Unlock,” a virtual reality educational escape room geared toward high school and early college students.

Partnership intern Mary Dodgen is a native of Fayetteville, Georgia, and attends Georgia State University, where she is earning a bachelor of interdisciplinary studies in biomedical science and enterprise. She is working alongside fellow intern Justin Von Gartzen of Brunswick, who is majoring in mathematics at Coastal Georgia. They’ve been learning how to code and use 3D computer graphics software to create different elements and rooms for the game.

Dodgen was looking for something to help round out her degree, and one of her professors recommended a Partnership summer internship.

“I saw this and said, ‘Innovations Labs? What’s this?’ I didn’t know what I was getting into, but it’s been really interesting so far,” Dodgen said. “I’ve been learning a lot of stuff that I never thought I’d learn.”

Dodgen wants to be a lab technician, however, she wasn’t very computer literate — until now. By spending a lot of time on the computer this summer, she is gaining new skills that will help her tremendously in her future career. She’s also enjoyed networking with the other interns in the program and the Coastal Georgia campus community.

Von Gartzen was also encouraged by a professor to apply for the internship.

“I heard about this (XREIL), and I want to do game development later on, so I thought this was great,” he said.

Von Gartzen wants to develop massive multiplayer online role-playing games or first-person shooter games. He’s new to coding, which he said was a little difficult to learn, but he’s more comfortable using the modeling software. Von Gartzen believes that the skills he’s gaining will translate well to video game development.

This project is being led by Assistant Vice President for Academic Student Engagement and Professor of Mathematics Dr. German Vargas and Assistant Vice President for Faculty Affairs and Professor of Mathematics Dr. Laura Lynch, who are co-founders of XREIL.

“The College of Coastal Georgia has been an innovation trailblazer in many areas related to teaching, learning, and student success,” Vargas said. “Partnership for Inclusive Innovation is providing the support for us to amplify our efforts to enhance teaching and learning through the integration of virtual reality experiences.”

It’s been wonderful to have the interns help develop the game, Vargas said. They’ve been able to provide new perspectives and fresh ideas.

“While they are taking advantage of the numerous opportunities to learn the technical elements of the work, we believe one of the most important learning opportunities is to engage in every step of a multidisciplinary and collaborative project — from the early stages of development to the delivery of a product that will have a global audience,” Vargas said.

This year’s Partnership Summer Internship cohort includes 62 students from as far away as Oregon and Illinois, who are involved in projects in North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and Georgia. The 35 host sites represent city and county governments, higher education, nonprofit agencies, civic and minority-serving organizations, incubators, and startups.

“The 2023 Summer Internship cohort is the largest, most competitive, most geographically diverse cohort the Partnership has had,” said Cody Cocchi, the Partnership’s student engagement manager. “This cohort will have the most significant impact across the state of any of our previous cohorts. This class represents a diverse group of higher ed students from 25 universities, eight states, and 14 countries.”

The internships will continue through the summer, with a wrap-up program in August, when students will present their work.

For information about PIN, contact Cody Cocchi at cody.cocchi@innovate.gatech.edu.

For more information about XREIL, contact German Vargas at gvargas@ccga.edu, or Laura Lynch at llynch@ccga.edu.