Conducting risk assessment on systems require a deep understanding of all aspects of the system. When training novices to conduct risk assessments, they need to form a strong understanding of the system, its relationship to the environment, and how it operates. The term mental model is used to describe this understanding. Novices, who are provided system design in a 2D format, may struggle to form a mental model for the system and, thus, may fail to embrace risk assessment processes. Training novices can, therefore, be a significant challenge. This paper presents a 3D, full-scale, highly interactive VR application titled Collaborative-VR (CVR) that was created with the hope it will allow novices to form a high level metal model for the system. Since risk assessments are done in teams, CVR was created to allow multiple users to work in the virtual reality environment and build systems with the hope that this experience will create the desired shared mental model that they need to effectively conduct risk assessments on system. CVR was implemented in a Risk Assessment course at Iowa State University. Students worked in teams in a full scale, virtual reality model of the International Space Station, where they were required to design a system to solve a problem and conduct risk assessment techniques on the system based on the life cycle of the project. Observations from a pilot study that indicated that students struggled forming robust representation of the systems and, subsequently, gained limited success in assessing systems risks. These observations and understanding CVR limitations will assist in further design features of CVR to overcome these limitations; further assessment of the capability of CVR to serve for forming strong, team shared mental models, will follow the implementations of the proposed improvements.