The Center for Data Innovation recently spoke with Colin Cooper, co-founder of Illuminate XR, a U.S.-based company building a platform that uses virtual reality (VR) and an AI system to track how students learn. Cooper explained how the system places students in interactive environments, captures their actions, and analyzes those behaviors to understand learning and skill development in real-time.
David Kertai: What does Illuminate XR offer?
Colin Cooper: For years, classrooms have relied on assessments that capture only final outcomes, such as multiple-choice questions or short responses with a single correct answer. This approach misses how students think, how they adapt to new information, and how their understanding develops over time.
To address this, we built a platform that combines VR headsets, interactive lessons, and an AI system. In VR simulations, students wear a headset that places them inside a fully digital, interactive environment. They can explore content, practice skills, and complete assessments in a hands-on way while staying aligned with classroom instruction.
Within the platform, our AI system, Nexus, observes how students interact with each lesson. It identifies patterns in what they understand, where they struggle, and how they adjust their approach. Nexus tracks each student’s progress over time and highlights key moments in their learning, giving teachers a clearer view of how to support each student. The platform is used across subjects such as science, history, and math in K–12 classrooms.
Kertai: How does Nexus track students’ training and progress?
Cooper: Nexus tracks progress by analyzing what students do during a VR lesson, how they approach tasks, and how they adjust when they encounter challenges. For example, it can track whether a student tests different strategies to solve a problem, how long they spend on each step, or whether they pause and reconsider after making a mistake. Instead of focusing only on whether an answer is correct, the system examines the sequence of actions students take, such as the order of their decisions or how they move through a simulation. It also tracks how students revise their approach after receiving feedback, such as changing strategy after a failed attempt or improving their performance over multiple tries.
Nexus organizes these behaviors into patterns that reflect key thinking skills, such as how students analyze and solve problems, how they reflect on their own thinking, communication, and adaptability. It compiles this into a clear profile that connects with existing grading systems, helping teachers understand why a student is struggling and what support will help them improve.
Kertai: How do your VR experiences work for students?
Cooper: Our VR experiences turn classroom concepts into environments students can actively step into and work through. Instead of only reading or watching, students engage directly with the material and make decisions in real time. For example, in a history lesson on the Apollo 11 Moon landing, students can attempt to land the lunar module themselves by managing fuel levels, descent speed, and landing conditions. Their decisions and adjustments become part of the learning process.
Schools can use shared headsets or rotate students through VR sessions during class, making it practical to use in everyday instruction. Each experience connects directly to the lesson, so students work with the same material but in a more interactive and hands-on way.
Kertai: What insights does your system provide for teachers?
Cooper: We give teachers a clearer view of how students approach learning, not just how they perform. Because Nexus analyzes student actions during lessons, teachers can see how students plan, adjust, and respond to challenges over time. Teachers access this information through simple dashboards and summaries that highlight key patterns in student behavior. For example, the system can show where students are struggling with a concept or suggest next steps for a lesson based on class performance.
Nexus also reduces workload by handling routine tasks such as summarizing student progress and supporting lesson planning. This gives teachers more time to focus on individual students while still managing a wide range of lessons, from exploring the solar system to understanding human biology.
Kertai: What is your vision for Illuminate XR?
Cooper: Our goal is to help schools move beyond memorization and toward developing students who can think, adapt, and solve unfamiliar problems. As AI systems improve, teachers will gain real-time insight into how students learn, not just what they know. We believe immersive learning—where students regularly learn by doing, experimenting, and making decisions in interactive environments—will become a standard part of education because it allows educators to better understand and support each student’s development.
