Using virtual reality in quest for real-world success

Business schools are packed with courses on entrepreneurship, financial accounting and academic theories on leadership.

Far less common are courses that teach students the “people skills” necessary to put their newlyacquired knowledge to use.

In the business world, where relationship-building is essential, these “soft” skills — personal confidence, negotiation, active listening, calm and flexibility — can play an outsize role. But they’re often treated like inborn traits, skills more likely to be won in a genetic lottery than cultivated in a classroom.

At Fordham University in New York City, business professors are challenging this notion with a hightech teaching tool: virtual reality (VR). Instead of listening to lectures or poring over textbooks, students in Fordham’s “Exploring Entrepreneurship” class are donning VR goggles that temporarily remove them from the classroom and place them in simulations designed to build professional skills.

In one simulation, students learn how to network among groups of strangers. In others, they lead negotiations at a high-stakes business meeting or give presentations in front of colleagues. While a handful of students are immersed in a simulation, their virtual selves are broadcast on a projector for the rest of the class to watch, and critique, in real time.

The students in the VR experience are given new names, genders and voices so their true identity remains anonymous, which enhances the realism, according Lyron Bentovim, the professor leading the class alongside professor Christine Janssen.

Bentovim is also chief executive of Glimpse Group, the company behind the technology students are using.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he is a passionate VR advocate who believes in its ability to reinvent educational environments.

“Your brain actually assumes you’ve experienced the simulated environment and it brings educational concepts to life for students,” he said. “When they leave class they don’t say, ‘We learned about negotiating today,’ they say, ‘I negotiated today,’ or ‘I led a business meeting today.’

“When you have the headset on, it feels real and that experience creates confidence.”

Beyond their in-class VR, the Glimpse Group this month introduced a new way for Fordham students to experience class from outside the classroom.

With a VR headset strapped on, students elsewhere can sit in on the class in real time as if they are physically present, and even participate with each other, the teacher and local students via a custom avatar.

A video made at Fordham shows students using VR headsets to join a real-world classroom re-created in the virtual world as the class unfolds in real time. Using the headset, remote students can participate with fellow students, take notes and ask an instructor questions.

Bentovim predicts that VR will become a feature in classrooms at every level of education. More advanced versions, he said, could even mean there is no need for a classroom, allowing people to join in an immersive classroom environment no matter where they are.

“VR could change how educational institutions think about budgeting as well,” he said. “Let’s say you wanted to simulate what it’s like to work as a geologist or teach a class about manufacturing in Japan. Now, you can take the whole class to Japan with the click of a button.”

Researchers are already beginning to investigate whether VR offers a meaningful substitute for real-world experiences.

A 2016 study concluded that virtual reality can be a successful replacement for lab experiences. European researchers randomly selected 189 biology students, had them practise a lab exercise and found no significant differences between students who practised in a virtual environment and those who did so in a physical lab.

When you have the headset on, it feels real and that experience creates confidence.

Lyron Bentovim, Fordham University