By Andrew Ramspacher
To the naked eye, it was a bizarre scene.
Tim Laseter, an esteemed professor of practice at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, who holds a doctoral degree and is the author or co-author of four books, stood in front of an empty lecture room, wearing large white goggles, holding controllers in his hands and listening to Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5.”
“There’s a couple of empty seats,” he shouted over the jazzy beats of the 1999 hit. “Oh, Dorothy grabbed one. Good job!”
OK, now for some context.
Laseter was teaching as part of The Executive Program at Darden, which aims to educate those already in advanced management positions who are seeking an edge in the evolving business world. This particular lesson, presented on a recent Wednesday afternoon, involved emerging technologies and the metaverse
So, no, Laseter wasn’t talking to himself. He was using a virtual reality headset to speak to the 30 students he was seeing through his goggles and helping them find open seats during a Bega-featured game of musical chairs.
The students, also equipped with VR headsets, were in a series of rooms down the hall from Laseter. But they were all looking at the same thing – a virtual classroom identical to the one they had physically occupied just an hour earlier.
While the lecture room was empty, Laseter was still able to interact with students through the metaverse. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)
“It’s very accurate,” said Erin Hodson, a student in the program and a vice president at Inova Health System in Northern Virginia. “As I turned my head and looked at the ground, I could see everything around me.”
That view just might be a glimpse at the future of education.
Darden’s Anne Trumbore is the chief digital learning officer within the school’s Sands Institute for Lifelong Learning team. Last year, after learning from faculty members that a number of Darden alumni have begun using the metaverse to enhance their own businesses, Trumbore commissioned a study that discovered 10 universities nationwide were investing in this kind of technology for higher education.
“And we started talking to the companies who were doing the work for them,” Trumbore said, “and they started showing us demonstrations of what was possible.”
Darden leaders were intrigued and soon, thanks to help from the Frank M. Sands donation, worked to create a metaverse version of a Darden classroom to use in The Executive Program as a pilot.
Normally, The Executive Program is set up for in-person classes over two weeks in the fall and in the spring, with a variety of Zoom meetings in between. This year, the Zoom meetings are being replaced with discussions in Darden’s virtual classroom, which the students tried out last week.
“We aren’t trying to replace the Darden School,” Trumbore said. “We’re just trying to bring the classroom to life and let these business leaders be aware of these new technologies.”
Erin Hodson, in the foreground, was among the students in The Executive Program at Darden experimenting with a VR headset and playing musical chairs to Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5.” (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)
“I’m not saying metaverse is the answer,” she continued, “but metaverse does allow you to be in different physical locations and meet in a way that’s not just interacting through a flat screen.”
Among the key discoveries in the Darden-commissioned study was that a professor at Morehouse College found that students learning in the metaverse had higher final grades, performed better on essays and had higher attendance rates than students in the same course learning through traditional on-campus or online delivery.
While it’s an experiment for the non-traditional students in The Executive Program, it could lead to advancements for traditional students at UVA, Trumbore said.
When the students were using the VR headsets, they were seeing this metaverse version of a Darden classroom. The students were represented virtually in the classroom with their avatars. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)
“The purpose is to give our participants experience with the newest technologies,” she said. “And it’s also to get our faculty comfortable with these technologies and thinking about how you use them in the classroom so that we can be more adaptive as these new technologies roll on.
“The metaverse is really a steppingstone for whatever is coming next.”
Adhering to a Darden philosophy, Laseter said he likes to have students think about could happen in the future instead of predicting something is certain to happen. It’s why he sees the benefits of the new wrinkle within The Executive Program.
“If we are on this path,” he said, “I think our students need to understand where these technologies are going and figure out how to adapt.”
In addition to the VR headset, Laseter’s Executive Program students have also played with a Magic Leap augmented reality headset that superimposes 3D-generated imagery in a real-world landscape.
Hodson, the executive visiting from Inova Health System, said adapting this technology could be a boon for the medical community.
“I think about telehealth,” she said, “where you really need the intellect of a physician thinking and being able to see clearly what’s going on in the room with a patient.
The Executive Program’s metaverse pilot also included experimentation with a Magic Leap augmented reality headset that superimposes 3D-generated imagery in a real-world landscape. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)
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