On February 5th, we were delighted to welcome Stephen Vaz and Heather Mack from the Innovation, Digital Education and Analytics (IDEA) Lab at London’s Imperial Business School to walk us through their innovative work on AI-powered assistants and VR training. Prioritising the needs of both students and teachers, these projects are highly collaborative and aim to create impactful, adaptive, and personalised learning experiences.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS

Stephen Vaz is the Director of Learning Innovation at the IDEA Lab.

Heather Mack is the Director of Strategy and Operations at the IDEA Lab.

Leveraging AI for Digital Assistance

In line with the Lab’s innovative mindset, their team has created three different types of AI-powered assistants. These conform to the university’s GenAI principles: transparant communication, data anonymisation, and enhancing rather than replacing human teaching. Moreover, the IDEA Lab collaborated with the university’s legal team to introduce consent processes for faculty, ensuring transparency about how AI tools are used and how data may be processed. This helps reduce uncertainty while supporting responsible and ethical innovation.

Interactive Digital Twins

For the university’s Global Online MBA and Strategic Marketing online programmes, the IDEA Lab created three AI-powered avatars of Faculty, using a third-party supplier for their development. These avatars are professors’ digital twins, meaning that their actual faces and voices are translated into virtual impersonations. They’re programmed in such a way that they don’t simply give the right answers immediately. Rather than simply delivering information, the digital twins engage students in dialogue, asking follow-up questions that prompt them to clarify, justify, and apply the knowledge they have already gained.

Students have already used these avatar chatbots to pose over 500 questions. By providing 24/7 online availability, they ensure that time zones, personal schedules, and geographical boundaries are not as much of an obstacle for online learners.

All image credits to the IDEA Lab.

Text-Based Chatbots

In addition to interactive avatars, the IDEA Lab has also created text-based chatbots. These are built entirely in-house, creating an independence which allows for quicker developments and more control. Moreover, they don’t require as much specialised expertise in terms of their development and continue to provide many of the same benefits as the avatars: they offer 24/7 availability and function as a safe space to ask any questions, irrespective of the student’s location.

Avatars in Instructional Videos

The team uses two approaches when creating AI-generated avatars for instructional videos. The first method uses a faculty member’s own voice. In this approach, teachers record their audio using a script or notes, which is then uploaded to the HeyGen platform. The audio is paired with an AI-generated avatar of the faculty member, allowing the avatar to deliver the content in the teacher’s own voice and style. This approach maintains authenticity while offering far greater flexibility in video production. Faculty do not need to appear on camera, and the visuals can be updated or adapted without requiring additional filming. This makes it significantly easier to refine existing videos or produce new content using the same avatar. 

The second method uses general-purpose avatars available within the HeyGen platform. These avatars are not designed to replicate a specific faculty member but instead provide a human-like presenter for content that is not directly delivered by academic staff. Faculty provide the script, and the IDEA Lab team translates this into an instructional video using one of these avatars. This approach helps give a face to certain modules or learning materials, creating a more engaging and personable experience for students even when a faculty presenter is not required. 

Example of what a text to video instructional video with a HeyGen avatar looks like.

VR Experiences

Vaz and Heather explained how they have also explored the use of VR to create effective learning experiences. They note that, through active learning, VR allows for deeper understanding and encourages critical self-reflection.  For Imperial Business School, two VR learning experiences have been used to help students develop skills such as communication, leadership, and perspective-taking, all of which are essential in real-world business environments. 

Navigating Mircroaggressions

In the first experience, students used a VR module developed by Bodyswaps that focuses on navigating microaggressions in the workplace. During the session, up to 50 students simultaneously engaged with immersive scenarios where they experienced acts of microaggression from different perspectives. The aim was to build empathy and awareness, which was reinforced through structured reflection and discussion following the VR session. 

Escape Room

In this second training, participants worked in groups to solve a virtual escape room across multiple sessions. Every participant had a different role for every session: one wore the VR glasses which displayed the room while everyone else each received a different set of clues to solve the puzzles. This asymmetry in available information, in addition to guidance from the teachers in between sessions, led to strengthening of teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills.

What’s Next?

In the second experience, developed by the IDEA Lab in collaboration with Imperial’s Digital Media Lab, participants worked in groups of four to solve a virtual escape room across multiple sessions. Each participant took on a different role: one student wore the VR headset and explored the virtual room, while the others received different sets of clues needed to solve the puzzles. This asymmetry of information required students to communicate clearly and collaborate effectively. Combined with guidance from instructors between sessions, the activity helped strengthen teamwork, communication, and problem-solving skills. This session could cater up to 76 students. 

A sincere thank you to Vaz and Heather for their interesting and insightful presentation! To access the recording of the full presentation, please don’t hesitate to contact us via xrcommunity@llinc.leidenuniv.nl.