Whenever higher education institutions implement new technology, calculated decisions are needed to ensure the initiative can be deployed at scale successfully.
Madrid’s IE Business School, one of the world’s top business institutions, utilizes more than 700 VR headsets to support 2,500 students every year, making it a perfect example of how to scale virtual reality in higher education.
At UnitedXR, Europe’s largest XR event, IE Business School’s Gema Morelo González spoke with VirtualSpeech CEO Sophie Thompson and outlined the 6 keys that contributed to IE’s virtual reality success at scale.
Let’s break them down so that you can do the same:
Key 1: Approach VR with the Right Mentality
IE Business School doesn’t treat VR as an optional technology project. Instead, it’s treated as a learning tool that needs ownership, processes, and integration into existing academic systems. This mentality is essential to the institution’s long-term success.
While a pilot program or small rollout can succeed when run as a passion project led by one or two invested faculty members, a large-scale, integrated virtual reality program requires a unified, organization-wide approach.
Buying VR headsets is easy – but making them usable at scale requires intentional changes to your institution’s approach to operations, staffing, and curriculum design.
IE’s mentality and approach to VR deployment ensures that everything it builds supports one goal: making immersive learning reliable enough to:
- Run every week
- Across countless courses
- Supporting thousands of students
If you’re aiming to follow in IE’s footsteps and scale your VR deployment to the next level, then make sure you’re starting with the right mentality.
Key 2: Get Smart with VR Headset Distribution Models
As we highlighted at the beginning, IE manages a staggering 700+ VR headsets, which are used to support over 2,500 students. Naturally, this means that supplying each student with a headset – one-to-one distribution – is impossible.
Instead, IE implemented a robust device-sharing system, allowing for headsets to be shared across cohorts through a loan system, similar to how universities handle laptops or specialist equipment.
This model allows for IE to use a (relatively) small device pool to support a much larger learner population – while maintaining control over inventory and availability.
So if you’re looking to scale your institution’s VR usage, know that with strategic thinking you can make a smaller number of devices work for your situation.
In fact, this loan model is the backbone of IE’s scaling efforts. The school’s existing IT service is used to manage device reservations, with a ticket system that facilitates requests, pick-ups, and returns.
By embedding VR into these existing processes, IE avoided creating any parallel systems or confusing request portals, instead making VR headset access predictable and familiar for both students and faculty.
This cross-functional, blended approach to device distribution is a key part of scaling your VR implementation.
Key 3: Prioritize Device Management and Setup
Mobile device management (MDM) is essential when maintaining a fleet of VR headsets – allowing headsets to be tracked, have their software managed, and their status monitored consistently.
IE uses ArborXR to achieve this functionality. ArborXR permits the school to remotely install and update apps like VirtualSpeech, control exactly what content appears on each device, and group headsets by course or program.
What does this mean? Every VR device is always up-to-date and loaded with the correct software, ensuring that every student has the same experience when they put on a headset.
MDMs are a must when deploying virtual reality headsets at scale, with ArborXR and ManageXR the two most popular options today.
Using MDMs also allows you to easily keep headset configurations simple, as IE does. Rather than loading each headset with dozens of different apps, IE prepares each with only the two or three pieces of software needed for a specific class or module.
Standardized setups like this reduce student confusion, speed up session prep times, and lower any faculty member’s need to double as tech support.
This approach mirrors how digital learning content is packaged, but applied to physical VR devices. This again shows the advantage of adapting virtual reality tech into existing processes, rather than creating parallel processes from scratch.
Key 4: Plan Around Staffing and In-Room Support Needs
Virtual reality is about more than just technology – it’s about how people use it to enhance their learning experience. When students are wearing headsets, IE ensures that staff are physically nearby to help with setup, troubleshooting, discomfort, or safety concerns.
IE reports that for classes of 40 learners, multiple support staff are needed to keep sessions running smoothly and on time. This staffing model is built directly into module planning and is a key reason their sessions scale reliably.
To replicate IE’s success in your institution, it’s important to plan accordingly and ensure faculty are trained to provide appropriate support.
Key 5: Coordinate Faculty and Academic Programs
IE’s virtual reality sessions are tightly coordinated between the faculty and academic program teams. This means aligning:
- Teaching schedules
- VR headset loan windows
- Student communications
So that everyone knows when a VirtualSpeech activity is taking place and can be prepared for the session.
IE describes this as similar to distributing a required case study or assignment – except the “content” is now a VR headset and simulation. Without that level of coordination, the learning experience won’t be as successful.
The takeaway here is to ensure that as you build up your VR deployment across curriculums that your communication channels and planning are reliable and scalable too.
Key 6: Drive Adoption Through the Curriculum
IE found that despite running successful sessions, early, optional use of VirtualSpeech didn’t scale. The school pivoted to making immersive practice a compulsory part of the curriculum, and immediately saw an increase in adoption.
In one course, students are required to complete a VR exercise, with VirtualSpeech making up 10% of the grade.
In fact, IE found that after this mandatory session, many students voluntarily repeated the immersive learning exercises. IE students complete an average of 2.2 sessions in VR, and to date have taken part in over 25,000 total VR sessions.
Incorporating immersive VR learning directly into the curriculum, as IE has done, ties back to the first key to success: mentality. This approach solidifies the principle that VR is not an optional, nice-to-have. Rather, it’s a powerful learning tool that requires implementation into your existing academic systems.
Why IE’s Model Works
IE successfully scaled their virtual reality implementation because they built an operating model around immersive learning.
- A dedicated implementation team
- A loan-based distribution system
- Strong device management
- Simple headset setups
- Curriculum integration
These key factors all work together, in unison, to allow IE to implement VR at scale across 700+ devices and 2,500+ students.
The result? VR is no longer an experiment at IE – it’s part of how learning is delivered at this esteemed institution.
Want to emulate IE’s approach? Speak to one of our expert team here at VirtualSpeech and bring immersive soft skills learning to your school or university.
