How Imperial Are Using Holograms to Teach MBAs

Lefevre admits there has already been interest surrounding the technology. He says, “Our media are talking to a number of business schools globally, and there’s been a lot of interest from our friends and partners.

“Faculty are collaborative on an international scale, and they want colleagues from overseas to talk in their classes, and this technology means guest speakers can routinely appear.

“We should see it facilitating all kinds of collaboration to really enhance the student experience. We do imagine this becomes far more common from now on for business schools.”

Lefevre adds, “You could use Zoom or Skype but what you don’t get is that realistic interaction, that ability to look someone in the eye and the hologram is a much greater sensitive presence, and that’s the point of it.”

The hologram work as a live interactive call which is calibrated to enable real-life interaction. Lefevre says, “The person making the presentation has a monitor in front of them which shows the audience and it’s calibrated to enable eye contact. The speaker points at people on the monitor and the hologram can point to a person in the audience.”

Although Imperial is leading the way in hologram technology, Lefevre admits the market has become more competitive and the department has to continually up their game, which ‘can only be a good thing for students’.

He says, “We’re planning all kinds of events. Our students are making a presentation by hologram in a few months’ time.

“We’re making a hologram presentation to ESADE business school in Barcelona, rather than jumping on a plane. And one of our faculty members wants to bring in one of his colleagues from the University of Toronto to the classroom.

“Because we’re the first, we’re limited to the locations we can beam from, but my expectation is it will become pretty commonplace.”

Since the launch of Imperial’s EdTech Lab in 2005, the department has gone from strength to strength. Lefevre says, “Because we’re a college of science, technology and medicine, the students come with very high expectations.

“They hear about Imperial’s reputation and think ‘Wow I can’t wait to get to Imperial because the tech is going to be amazing,’ so we have to fulfil those expectations.

“It’s a bit different to most business schools, we have no choice but to really embrace it and do something special. We’ve been investing heavily in tech for longer and to larger scale than any other business school in Europe.”

However, the notion that technology could take over human interaction has been a concern for people with no ties in the tech sector. But Lefevre admits, this won’t be the case at Imperial.

He says, “One of our themes is ‘putting the human’ into technology. We don’t want the learning experience to be depersonalized, and technology software systems to take over.

“We think learning is a very human and personal process, so we always use technology to facilitate that human interaction, rather than just synthesizing it, which we think would be a) ineffective and b) an awful experience generally for students.”

In an everchanging world where technological advances happen constantly, Lefevre admits there’s no way of predicting what the tech world holds.

He says, “Next year there’ll be another technology, and the year after that there’ll be another which means more competition.

“It’s very difficult to predict the future, as a year ago we didn’t imagine we’d be working with holograms.”

Although it can be difficult to pre-empt technological advances, that doesn’t mean the EdTech Lab isn’t doing all it can to prepare for the future. Lefevre says, “We have a set of core values and principals we use to navigate how we react to changes in the market, with new technology that comes along. A commitment to quality and a commitment to education first."

 The lecture in action