B-Schools Get a Feel for Virtual Reality
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Social VR makes it into the classroom. Originally sparked by hurricanes and snow at MIT. Students say it is 'almost' as good as being there.]
Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business in May launched an online certificate program that features customizable avatars for students who attend classes in a virtual space resembling the GSB campus. The Bay Area school joins the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, which uses similar technology in its executive-education programs.
A handful of other educational institutions and businesses have adopted the virtual-reality technology AvayaLive Engage, according to software company Avaya Inc.
Still, schools using the technology have found they are able to re-create the essence of the on-campus learning experience for students and faculty scattered across the globe.
...the technology made its in-class debut during Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. ... a “perfect opportunity to try using this technology to enable people who couldn’t attend because of the storm to attend virtually.”
The pilot was so successful, Mr. Hirst said, that it was incorporated into several of Sloan’s executive-education courses, including ones on big data and general management, where it caught the attention of Stanford’s GSB executive-education team.
Students and professors say the software, which allows avatars to gesture, jump and run, facilitates social interactions key to group projects and networking that would otherwise be absent from an online-learning experience.
Still, students and faculty say there’s no substitute—virtual or otherwise—for face-to-face interaction. “One drawback is not having the opportunity to really see facial expressions,” said Peter DeMarzo,professor of finance at Stanford’s GSB and faculty director of its remote-certificate program, though he added that a webcam shot of someone’s face could be placed on a wall or elsewhere in the virtual space.
See the full story here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/b-schools-get-a-feel-for-virtual-reality-1435776045