July 20, 2021 – Arthur, a virtual reality (VR) office space provider that helps businesses create large-scale virtual offices with advanced fully immersive collaborative environments, has today announced that it has partnered with Georgia State University (GSU) to create a VR program for international business students.
The course, titled ‘Management in Central America: Panama & Costa Rica. A Virtual Learning Experience,’ uses Arthur’s VR platform to enable students to learn about how work is changing in the direction of hybrid models, and the role that immersive technologies such as VR play as a part of the changing work landscape.
Students can experience a VR team building use case and explore the feeling of presence and being in the same space thanks to the Arthur platform, which allows students to be immersed in both the virtual and real-world, and highlights the capabilities of shared spaces and the power of technology to traverse physical distances. Dr. Evaristo F. Doria, a senior lecturer at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business and the course leader, noted that through Arthur, students learn that geographic distances are no longer an obstacle to collaboration.
“Arthur’s donation to our course was pivotal to the students’ learning experience. Originally planned as a study abroad program, these students learned to pivot amid the pandemic and use VR office spaces that real companies utilize in their day-to-day. This experience increased the level of students’ engagement versus traditional video conferencing,” said Dr. Doria. “VR offers a great opportunity for international business educators to create exciting and engaging learning experiences across borders for their students. One fundamental benefit is that it is easy to monitor and collect training metrics during experiential learning in VR – a fact that helps educators control the quality of the learning experience. Future business leaders need to learn how to work in VR to remain competitive in the workplace.”
Dr. Laura Boudon, Director of Study Abroad Programs at GSU, commented: “With limited study abroad this summer because of COVID-19, it was wonderful to see students still be able to engage globally and learn about new international business practices using virtual reality.”
Arthur donated eight Oculus Quest 2 headsets for GSU students and Dr. Doria to use. In addition, Arthur’s team provided tutorials to all throughout the duration of the course.
“Remote and hybrid work has always been talked about in future tense; however, the COVID-19 pandemic has made that the current reality. By partnering with Dr. Doria and GSU, we’re able to bring real-world VR applications to the classroom, educating students on how to utilize new technologies that they’ll one day use in a business environment,” said Christoph Fleischmann, Founder and CEO of Arthur. “Business students are entering the workforce at a time of globalization with a limitless future of possibilities.”
Arthur’s VR solution enables collaborative sessions in a remote environment, allowing business clients to build virtual office spaces with permanency features and photo-realistic avatars. Arthur’s platform allows students to be immersed in both the virtual and real-world, highlighting the capabilities of shared spaces and the power of technology to traverse physical distances.
For more information on Arthur and its virtual collaboration platform, click here. For those interested in implementing Arthur and its professional VR platform for businesses, please get in touch with us.
Image credit: Arthur / Georgia State University
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Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.