Image credit: ESMT business school in Berlin
ESMT Berlin has been named “top in Germany” by the Financial Times and is the most international business school in the country. Each year more than 90% of its full-time MBA students come from outside of Germany.
The school offers management degree programs and executive education that focuses on three main topics: leadership and social responsibility, European competitiveness, and the management of technology.
Students at the ESMT business school in Berlin have a new leadership training module in their course: a 45 minute virtual reality game designed to reinforce leadership principles. These executives are from some of Germany’s biggest companies. They’re not exactly strangers to leadership. But the game tests their abilities in a way that would be difficult to replicate in the non-virtual world.
Image credit:
Financial Times
Students
at the ESMT Berlin business school are using virtual reality to learn
leadership in a digital world
In an article in the Financial Times, Benjamin Quaiser, the program
director at ESMT Berlin, says “Digitization is a topic or theme in every class
we teach, because these executives all know that their businesses are being, or
will be, disrupted by digital technology. But it’s quite hard to talk about it
without using technology. By immersing them in a virtual environment where they
have to lead, collaborate and solve problems with each other, they experience
how challenging it is to lead in a digital world.”
Virtual reality teaching environments are increasingly being used in
European business schools. In a world where remote working is becoming the
norm, more business schools are teaching their students using virtual reality.
BI Norwegian
Business School in Oslo
is taking a similar approach with its students and virtual learning. They use
an application called Differ which allows students to participate in classes
virtually. The school has found that virtual assistant technology can help
increase student engagement in the real world. Anne Berit Swanberg, director at
the school's learning lab, says class participation is five times higher after
students use Differ, the chatbot it employs to encourage them to engage with
course material.
NEOMA Business School in
France is using the latest technologies to foster creativity, crucial for
business success, in its master’s and executive students. Created in 2013 by
the merger of France’s Rouen Business School and Reims Management School, NEOMA
has innovation at its core.
The school was the first in the world to use immersive virtual reality in
its management courses. In a marketing simulation, students are equipped with
virtual reality headsets and analyze the setup of a store reconstructed in 360°
photos and videos.
Helena González Gómez—HR professor and head of the People and
Organizations Department—explains, virtual reality is used as a complementary
teaching resource alongside a host of experiential learning experiences:
internships, company visits, and student society expeditions. “In this fast,
rapidly-changing business environment, you need innovation to compete at
different levels. And the first step for innovation is creativity,” she says.
In a 2010 study of over 1,500 CEOs across 60 nations conducted by IBM,
60% cited creativity as the most important leadership quality. For Helena, who
has a PhD in Management from Spain’s IE Business School, creativity is
associated with organizational sustainability.
IE Business School is
another European business school boosting the technological immersion of
students to transform the learning experience.
Image credit:
IE Business School
IE Business School offers
a technology-based learning ecosystem for leaders making a difference in the
world through innovation, global vision, an entrepreneurial mindset and a
unique approach to the Humanities.
In October, IE Business School unveiled its commitment to the
technological immersion of its students. The IE Learning Innovation team
has prototyped an interactive and collaborative platform, a space designed with
VR technology where students and professors could meet and work together. “We
are actively experimenting with VR technology as we believe it holds a big
potential for the future: it is immersive, emotional, helps to keep the student
attention and can offer a valuable space for practice. In the future, we
believe it will help empower conceptual learning at scale” explains Jolanta
Golanowska, Director of IE Learning Innovation.