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This willingness to experiment has been represented by the way the school has firmly embraced the potential of technology to support cutting-edge learning. As an example of this in practice, the school has taken great strides in exploiting the powerful potential of Virtual Reality (VR) to offer truly immersive learning experiences. We now boast a growing bank of VR case studies – ranging from negotiating tense boardroom encounters to embarking on a unique team mission to Mars – placing the learner at the heart of the action and deeply enhancing student engagement. Not only does this experience allow participants to grasp the nuances of a situation more easily, but it allows them to take in more information faster and more deeply when compared to traditional printed case studies.
VR has proved particularly effective during the bi-annual Master Strategist Day (MSD). Part of the core strategy course in the INSEAD MBA programme, the MSD invites students to work with an organisation and come up with real-world solutions to the problems they face.
In the last year, virtual reality has been used to transport MBA students to the beaches of Cape Verde to help save turtles, to Malawi’s national parks to confront issues of poaching and sustainability, and to Tanzania, where they advised the NGO Miracle Feet on ways of scaling their mission to provide life-altering operations for children suffering from clubfoot.
As Ithai Stern, Professor of Strategy and Academic Director of the INSEAD VR Immersive Learning Initiative puts it, “In all these cases, VR has enabled the students to better understand the setting and challenges and thus develop better real-world solutions for the organisation’s core strategic problems.”
As all these cases demonstrate, VR has provided an opportunity for students to visit distant locations – even during the tightest of travel restrictions – and has allowed them to tour factories and markets without leaving the classroom.
Post-Covid, using VR in this way promises to save time and money and to reduce carbon footprints while offering a more controlled, convenient and rewarding experience for the participants. The potential long-term value of this technology is reflected in the fact that VR experiences are now integrated into a number of our Executive Education programmes.