Research in the field of engineering education highlights the ineffectiveness of one-way, lecture-based teaching and strongly advocates that faculty adopt new pedagogies that integrate technological tools. Such strategies actively engage learners and support their understanding. To revolutionize the traditional haptic learning pedagogy, Virtual Reality (VR) can be incorporated to support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students' level of learning, advance their communication skills and enhance problem-solving skills. VR is a technological tool that immerses students in the real built environment and utilizes different parts of the brain to access auditory and visual data. This ongoing, work in progress, research study describes the process of interweaving between engineering, technology, architecture and building sciences, through integration of VR. VR was used to leverage a seamless virtual application thus complementing theories with unlimited interactive pedagogies, which kept learners engaged, interested and ultimately fosters retention particularly in haptic courses. Specifically, this study integrates the VR technology into an Environmental Science Laboratory to support teaching, enhance students' understanding, and increase retention as well as triggering an interactive educational environment. This paper focuses on the method of advancing haptic learning with VR through introducing and analyzing five modules taught in a building sciences laboratory course in addition to sharing limitations and some lessons learned of this pedagogy. Consequently advancing an unorthodox pedagogical approach that not only provides students with a unique educational experience but also equips them with know-how and knowledge to utilize emerging technologies.
