VirtualEduElevator Pitch

Yoni Dayan

The AnalysisDespite the buzz around MOOC, the attrition rate of students in those online courses is very high. You have all witnessed hundreds of “ghost profiles”, people who registered only to check the lessons, and then vanishing. You have all seen students participating in the beginning, then quickly not giving any news. According to instructors, more than 50% of the people who signed up in a MOOC the first week aren’t there during the last. The causes are multiple: lack of time, loss of interest for the course, boredom generated by traditional approaches in knowledge sharing (lengthy texts to read, videos, etc.), deficiency in class interaction and emulation which old-school forums or social networks fail to simulate, absence of valuable recognition of MOOCs with proper certificates and credits which could be leveraged in our education and in our professional life… This dynamic has numerous repercussions: detrimental experience of the committed students in group-based MOOCs such as in NovoEd when half the team-mates aren’t there, ripple-effect on the students’ motivation when they see that so many are dropping out, loss of potential income for the platforms, possible damaging of the reputation of the course, etc.

Purpose and potential of VirtualEdu

In my quest for innovation and pioneering technology, I am convinced that virtual reality can be one of the most promising answers to this situation in the mid-term, by making online education reaching its full potential. Think of wearing a head-mounted display for a few hours per week, when you want, and being suddenly immersed in a virtual class. You aren’t passively watching a video on your flat screen, you are WITHIN a lecture hall amongst fellow students, you are bathed in instructors’ speeches, you can see their material in their board or better, interact with them (3D models, etc.) directly, you can participate with others, simulate a real exam and gather your focus with the amount of stress needed rather than being distracted by the reality. The possibilities are endless, and you basically have the best of both worlds: the flexibility and massive number of learners from distant education, and the commitment, involvement, as well as personal and quality interaction of the physical one.

The technology is nearly here, developed by actors such as Oculus VR (recently acquired by Facebook for $2 billion) and Sony’s Morpheus, but primarily aimed at gaming. With the dissemination of those devices, their increasingly more user-friendly form, and their decrease in cost, making a Beijing citizen believing he is in the Sorbonne’s big auditorium for a lecture on humanities, then in Stanford for a crash course on creativity in one of the d.school’s labs, can become a reality in a few years. But for that, we need to build the relevant partnerships between universities, MOOC platforms and technology providers, as well as preparing the equipment and the content. This is where VirtualEdu will step in, with the goal of pushing online education to the next, ultimate, and revolutionary stage, to the benefit of millions of learners.

Purpose and potential of VirtualEdu

As if you were in a lecture hall with other students, from your passenger seat