Navigating through a series of galleries, public health students, instructors, and staff examined art pieces reflecting on aspects of culture and identity impacting women’s health. The exhibit contained family photos, videos on herbal remedies, and digital collages highlighting the messaging about motherhood and femininity that many young girls receive. While the artwork spoke to powerful real-world experiences, it occupied a completely digital space viewed through a virtual reality (VR) headset or a smartphone.
The VR project was available for attendees to experience at the Women’s Health VR Showcase hosted last month in the Health Equity Hub. The immersive environments allowed students to integrate storytelling, visual design, and public health content with emerging technology.
“VR, along with other emerging educational technologies, provides students with opportunities to think critically and creatively about how information is shared, how messages are conveyed, and how stories are told,” shared Angie Denisse Otiniano Verissimo, an associate professor of teaching in the Department of Community Health Sciences. “For public health students, it offers a unique opportunity to translate research, lived experiences, and community knowledge into formats that can foster empathy, dialogue, and understanding.”
The VR worlds were created as part of CHS 226 Women’s Health, a graduate course taught Spring 2026 through the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Fielding School of Public Health. Students collaborated with staff at the UCLA Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) and the Blending Research and Instruction in Data-Generated Environments (BRIDGE) Innovation Studio to design art installations exploring topics like motherhood, identity, reproductive care, violence, and community activism through their unique perspectives.
Otiniano Verissimo’s inclusion of the VR project in CHS 226 was grounded in Transfronteriza Rasquache “no-muralismo,” an artistic pedagogical methodology created by Liliana Conlisk Gallegos, the course’s guest artist and a professor of communication studies at California State University, San Bernardino. The approach draws on Chicana, decolonial, and transborder theory to demystify technology’s learning application and address community challenges.
The instructional staff working with students additionally saw the project as an opportunity to connect research, policy, environment, culture, and care in a more human-centered way.
“VR gives students a way to move beyond learning about topics in the abstract and begin to encounter them as lived experiences,” shared Joy Guey, Director of the BRIDGE Innovation Studio. “They have to think through the experiences they are building, the perspective they are asking others to enter, and the choices they make as designers.”
Students in CHS 226 found that the projects provided an opportunity to more deeply examine women’s health topics.
“I was able to reflect on what I am passionate about, what moved me, and what I believed was important for others to see,” shared MPH student Kaila Comerie. “Being able to integrate my personal work into the academic sphere led me to engage more personally with the prevalent issues discussed each week, thinking about how they relate to my experiences.”
Support for this course was provided by the TLC to advance educational innovation, elevate teaching, and foster accessible learning experiences that engage all students. The collaboration on the course comes as part of a broader initiative to explore how leveraging emerging academic technologies can elevate instruction, which is outlined in the UCLA for Life flagship initiative, a part of the One UCLA campaign, and Goal 4 of the University’s Strategic Plan.
Through the class project, Otiniano Verissimo has highlighted how new instructional formats can support interactive experiences that move beyond traditional academic projects.
“The power of this project was not simply that students used VR, but that VR gave them a way to share stories, perspectives, and lived contexts that are often flattened in traditional assignments,” shared Mark Malonzo, an associate instructional designer at the TLC and project lead for the course. “That is where instructional design and TLC support can make a real difference: helping faculty connect emerging technologies to meaningful learning, reflection, and storytelling.”
Ultimately, Otiniano Verissimo was encouraged to see how students found agency over their learning through effective creative choices that translated their research into the VR worlds.
“Their creativity, critical thinking, and willingness to engage with complex and often deeply personal women’s health issues resulted in immersive experiences that were thoughtful, visually compelling, and emotionally impactful,” she noted. “This sense of ownership and agency transformed the learning experience and demonstrated the potential of emerging technologies to support collaborative, engaged, and justice-oriented public health education.”
Explore the Virtual Reality projects from CHS 226
Prenatal care, Reproductive care
Violence, Community Initiatives, & Activism (Content warning: contains mature content)