RTC: The Future of Learning and XR’s Role in Education

Louise Paepe
Well, thank you for having me. Very excited to be here.

Brad Scoggin
Well, maybe we can just start with giving us a quick intro into, what RTC Antwerp is, what it does, and what’s your role there?

Louise Paepe
Well, RTC is an organization within the government. We work for the government in Flanders, the region of Belgium, more specifically for the Department of Education and Training. What we do is we bring innovation from the industry, from the companies, to the schools. We’ve been doing that for about 20 years now. And we do that in multiple ways.

Louise Paepe
We organize trainings. We have materials that schools can lend out. For example, we have an industrial robot arm. We have CPR mannequins. We organize trainings in multiple fields, mostly in technical and vocational education. and my role within RTC is… I manage, a few of the projects that we’ve been doing and more specifically the XR action plan, where we are deploying all the VR headsets that we’ll talk about more today.

Will Stackable
What a fun job! Can I have your job? You get to play with robotic arms in VR and…

Brad Scoggin
Tell us a little bit about the importance. You know, it’s a regional training center is where education meets the labor market. And talk about the importance of staying on the cutting edge of tech in that in that space.

Louise Paepe
Well, the industry is changing all the time, and it’s very difficult for schools to keep up with all of that. So that’s why we’re here to support the health of them. it’s difficult for teachers to keep up with all the new technologies, all the new machines – VR headsets being one of them – for most, for most schools. So we try to support them by introducing them to technology, learning how to work with it, and to basically better prepare students for their future careers. And the moment when they enter the labor market that they are prepared for all these new things that that they will be confronted with.

Will Stackable
How did you first start thinking about VR? When did that come into the picture?

Louise Paepe
Well, I think we started with here a long time ago, [and we] started very small. We noticed the needs in the schools, but, also in the industry, we noticed a lot of companies working on training their employees. We started seeing the benefits, and we wanted to make an introduction to this technology to our schools, because we saw the benefits. You know, schools, they often have limited funds.

So they have to work with sometimes very old equipment or equipment that is just not up to date with the modern standards in the industry. So we saw a huge benefit there for VR headsets as well. You know, you are able to train new techniques on new machines that are just not possible in school, but also for dangerous procedures, for example, you know, that cause a lot of benefits. And we wanted to introduce that in our education system in a structured way because we noticed schools were purchasing headsets themselves. And most of the times they were just purchasing some applications from the App Store. You don’t really know what to do with them. So the government decided if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it in a structured way for all the schools and to have an equal chance for every school, to learn and to experiment with it. And that’s what we did.

Will Stackable
So interesting. So you have schools that are purchasing headsets. One off. Everybody’s coming up with their own systems. You’re in a unique position where you’ve got a bird’s eye view, and you’re seeing this happen. And at some point, you decide we need to make a more concerted effort. Tell us a little bit about that process of going from individual schools with their own programs to how do you start the process of figuring out the scope and size of doing a larger deployment?

Louise Paepe
We consulted with a lot of our partners. We have a very large network team in Belgium, consisting of companies in multiple industries. But also we work closely with universities and colleges, and they all had experiences with the use of extended reality. So they had a lot of advice. I think we talked with over a hundred different partners. So all sorts of companies and universities, too. Yeah, basically consult with them their best advice and their best practices, and we combined all of that in our action plan that is currently being enrolled by the Spanish government.

Brad Scoggin
And you’re currently serving 150,000 students in almost 700 schools

Louise Paepe
Yeah.

Well, our schools are very excited to have a new opportunity, new possibilities to train certain things that weren’t possible before. They are extinguishing fires. They are doing CPR in a realistic environment. They’re visualizing certain concepts, from science and like that that were very difficult before. They’re also doing, training on, on speaking, with virtual speech, for example.

so we, we have a lot of content available. everything is free, by the way, for the schools. So schools are able to use everything for free. And we offer them with a large library. I think it consists right now of about a 360 different exercises that we’re able to do, in practically every subject that is being taught in our schools.

Brad Scoggin
Wow. Yeah. 150,000 students, 700 schools. And they’re able to train in things that are difficult, dangerous, or maybe expensive to produce, you know, in a typical classroom. That’s very impressive. Talk to us about the content. I think you have 300 modules of content. Where does the content come from? How do you manage the content?

Louise Paepe
Good question. Yeah, it’s been quite a process to get to where we are, and we’re still expanding. So we started out. The government here in Flanders invested a lot in development of content as well. We had a project called innovate where the government had a budget available of approximately €1 million. Schools could apply for it by suggesting a certain application that they wanted to develop, and they developed it together with software developers. And so it’s really tailored to the needs of our education system, the learning goals within our schools. So that’s how we start. I think we had about 15 applications that were developed through this project. And then we start contacting I since we spoke with a lot of software developers, we basically started by doing the research ourselves, a lot of hours searching on the internet, consulting with partners, with schools, to see what was needed, to see what existed. and then we went from there.

I think, the first couple of months, we started out really slowly. We had only a few apps available, but it started growing very quickly. and at this time we are no longer searching ourselves. But I see these [companies] are contacting us, to introduce their company to us and to see how that would work with them potentially. So it’s been quite a ride, but we’re very happy with the results that we have so far.

Brad Scoggin
You said you started with some of that custom content, like today of the 300. You know, like, what percentage is custom versus off the shelf?

Louise Paepe
I think it’s I think it’s about 15 to 20 app of the, the 300 that we currently have. Yeah. Custom developed by the government.

Brad Scoggin
Yeah. That’s something we talk about a lot. You know, we’ve got our XR directory, which is one of the largest directories of ISVs in the world that we try to bring in and help connect companies or education institutions to. But it is interesting seeing the mix of custom versus off the shelf. And we do see a lot. I think often what we see is maybe something off the shelf to start to prove it and then maybe go custom. So it’s interesting that you took the other out. But obviously the scale that you’re working at, it’s challenging and maybe more expensive to do everything custom. It’s really interesting. And man, managing all those relationships. I think it’s also interesting. just that you said you started small. Right? Let’s start small and let’s get some proof or some, some results and then go from there.

Will Stackable
I’m curious. So with that many modules in that many schools, how do you help guide educators to figure out which content makes sense for their program? And do you have created guides or how are you sort of organizing the content and providing it to educators in a way that’s accessible?

Louise Paepe
Well, we do that in multiple ways. One of the extraction plan, as we have it in the government right now consists of four pillars. So the, XR lending service, as we call it, which is the distribution of the hardware and software – It’s just one of the pillars, that is being managed by the artists, but we have three more, and one of them is Pixar Academy, where we are, training teachers. We’ve been organizing multiple trainings a week for about a year now, where students can’t really join, but it’s most likely for teachers. So teachers can take the training. They can re-learn how to work with it so they feel confident in using sets within their classroom. So that’s the way that we start, by making them comfortable with the hardware. But we also let them test out software. We support them in doing that during those trainings. We also have that available on our website. It’s a spreadsheet. It’s quite a big spreadsheet with all the information they need, basically. So we have the name of the application, a brief summary languages, the subject that it’s for. So teachers are able to navigate, with the spreadsheet to see what’s relevant for their course, for their subject. But then we also use the text within ArborXR in there – ArborXR home environments. Teachers are also able to use those to filter out content, that is relevant for their lesson.

Will Stackable
You know I love that. One of the things we’ve often talked about, and we hear regularly from, I’d say, the more successful use cases that we’re observing is the importance of having that wraparound approach when it comes to programing, that it’s not enough to have great content and great headsets and get it and getting it into the hands of the end user. You actually have to have the strategy and intention behind it to be able to make a program that’s actually going to work. And I guess that’s true of any technology, but I think sometimes we can hope to just drop in some exciting new technology into a school or into an organization and just expect that it’s going to work when really, I guess just it doesn’t work that way. And obviously your team being able to have that high level strategic overview and then, you know, taking it to the schools individually, it’s a really cool combination. I’m curious because I know we’ve been really high level talking about processes, systems. Do you have any success stories at the individual level, or are there any students or teachers that, where you kind of point to that? Well, they really had an incredible experience. And if you had a chance to even do you get to go to the schools and see kids put on these headsets and have, you know, the kind of moment?

Louise Paepe
That’s one of the most fun parts, I would say is that we do get the feedback from the schools. We get a lot of feedback from teachers who are also often invited to things that they organize. A few weeks ago, we had a school that was a really fun event as well. We had a school where, they were doing a partnership with Hillcrest, which is an organization here in Belgium, and it’s basically an organization for health care workers. So healthcare professionals – they did a training together. So the school, they were using the VR headsets and the content that is healthcare related to train the people from the organization for Healthcare professionals. And then the other way around, they were training the students with, with similar techniques within their field. but that was a really cool event that I went to. It was really cool to see, how they were interacting with schools and industry. And that’s basically what we stand for. That’s our main goal – to bring those two together. So that’s, that’s really nice.

Brad Scoggin
So we got into VR almost eight years ago, Will, which is nuts. It feels like a lifetime ago. I think about all the seasons of my life in the last 8 years. But when we started, Louise, we were actually in location-based entertainment. That meant we were supporting VR arcades. We even had our own location for a bit. But I totally agree with you. One of the most rewarding things early on was seeing the father and the son come in, the kid put on the headset and just the joy on their face when they got to experience the technology for the first time. It is super rewarding and I can imagine that even more so when it’s an educational setting there’s real… I mean, fun is good and all, but when there’s real value, that’s awesome. Okay, you deployed a thousand headsets last year, which is no small feat. How did you ensure that scaling that would happen as seamlessly as possible, and maybe talk about some of the challenges that you did face?

Louise Paepe
Well, it was a very complex, thing for us, basically because we were pioneering ourselves there. So we didn’t really have any examples to look up to for such a large deployment in education. So it took us quite some time, quite some research, that we had to do. it was a very intense process. We started with, like I said before with talking to over 100 of our partners. Then we combined all that advice, we made up the extraction plan, and then we had to go to the European tendering process to purchase all the headsets. We also had to do that for, choosing an MDM, which is essential for us because we’re managing that much. It’s that many headsets over almost 700 schools and more than 700 locations. So it’s quite complex. So we’re very happy that we were able to partner up with our SDA, because it made the deployment so much easier. We were able to do everything remotely, we’re able to support the schools. For us, it was also important to give the schools access to ArborXR as well because we wanted them to experience some of the features themselves as well. So that was quite complex as well because we had to come up with a system, since we have that many schools. and privacy is a big issue here as well because school A can’t see what school B is doing.

So it was it was a very complex process to get where we are. But Roberto from ArborXR helps us out there greatly as well. So we came up with the structure that we currently have, which is that we are working with multiple organizations within our MDM to ensure that every school has access to their own organization so that they are able to experience teachers themselves.

Will Stackable
We should dig in here a little bit more. Because this is… I think this is for anybody listening who has a complex set up. One of the things that we’re really seasoned at, and we do regularly at different scale is working with organizations that have global offices, working with government agencies that, you know, are working with a number of different privacy concerns and even working with resellers, companies that have different levels of input and management over some of the headsets. So I’m curious, you know, for your team. Talk a little bit about the interaction between what’s happening in the headset at the school level, what you want the school to be able to do, and then what your team wants to be able to do in terms of pushing content or any oversight or management you do. So I think for a lot of organizations, that is a sticking point that an XR pilot, you know, stage is easy because you’ve got 50 headsets and it’s the XR team. But once the whole organization, once the whole school district has access to this technology, it gets much more complicated. So maybe you just talk a little bit about the different like levels of access and how you’re thinking about all these different people interacting with this technology.

Louise Paepe
I think we have two roles that we’re really focusing on. one is for teachers and one is for more the I.T. coordinators, as we call them here. So they are responsible for everything I.T. related with school. So the teacher, they have very limited access. I think the most features that they use is mostly casting devices to be able to see what the students are doing within the headset. But also, they are using the dashboard for analytics to see the content library, to see the status of devices, things like that. So it’s, it’s a very limited access. yeah. I see coordinators, they have a little bit more so they are also able to push content. They are also able to do updates and things like that. And to make sure that everything runs smoothly within the school, to the uploading of content. So everything to do with APIs and things like that, that is just restricted for APKs. So schools have no access to that, that was very important for us to make sure, for all the partners that we have, everything is safe. So the APK is just for urgency. So no school has access to it. That was very important for them, but also for us.

Will Stackable
Yeah. That’s good. I think having control, you know, being able to have role-based access, being able to set up different device groups and tag devices and sort of separate them out. I think that that’s, even a few years ago, we didn’t have that as part of our feature set. And I think what we’ve noticed is that as organizations have grown their use cases – and you’re one of the, you know, leading examples of a large organization with hundreds of applications across hundreds of schools.

Will Stackable
I think it is really important for any XR champion, as they’re thinking about going from the pilot stage to scale. Just think through like what added complexity starts coming in and who needs access to what. And kudos to your team for really thinking ahead and be able to do that. I think sometimes we’re seeing schools are ad hoc figuring it out, you know, individual schools or individual departments.

But when you’re able to have sort of a broad view from the beginning and design it that way, you know, you’re able to do a lot more. I want to talk about briefly. I know we’re kind of running out of time, but I think you have you found some great partners? I know virtual speech and smooth soft VR expert. And you talked a little bit about the process of sort of vetting those different ISVs and resellers. But how I think for anybody listening who’s trying to start the process of figuring out who should we work with and what what’s important, what parameters should we be putting in place as we go to find other vendors? You know, you’ve looked at more, more options than anybody. What are some of the lessons you’ve learned on that topic?

Louise Paepe
it involves a lot of testing. That’s the main thing. For us, we, whenever we had a discussion with a software partner, it involves a lot of testing, multiple hours. sometimes we would also consult our schools as well to see how much of the content available within an app for example is really relevant for the subjects that they teach. So we also have a close look at lesson plans and learning goals, for all of the schools to make sure that whatever application that we provide really complements those goals and the lesson plans to make sure that the content that we provide is really relevant for teachers. We don’t want yours to be just a gimmick or a fun game that they can do once a year. We really want to make it sustainable within our education system. And to do that, we have to make sure that the content we provide is really relevant and it complements the teaching.

Will Stackable
Can you speak a little bit more about proving out use cases and any analytics you’re looking at? You have a program with many, many students, many schools. How do you, as RTC, how do you point to whether this program is successful or not, or even within the larger scope of all the content that’s being used? How do you identify what’s working and what’s successful?

Louise Paepe
The analytics available in the dashboard for ArborXR work well. But we talk a lot of talk a lot with our teachers as well. We organized a feedback meeting a couple weeks ago too. We invited all the teachers there. A lot of them showed up fortunately. So we had a great talk with them. They discussed which applications were really useful for them. And it’s the ones you mentioned, definitely are very successful. but basically everything that we offer. So, if you are looking for relevant content in education, definitely take a look at our website. The spreadsheet is available there. so everything that we offer is really valuable for educational, we believe.

Brad Scoggin
Yeah, I love that. Proving ROI by talking to the people on the ground and then using the dashboard to check out the analytics. Very impressive. Louise, to me, you are just the definition of a pioneer, and I just appreciate so much your thoughtfulness to scale a thousand devices, 150,000 students, government schools. That’s a very complex process. Lots of challenges along the way. And we’re just happy that Arbor has been able to be a part of helping solve some of those challenges.

Louise Paepe
Awesome. We’re very happy to have you aboard as well. I think we couldn’t have done it without ArborXR. So we would have been a logistical nightmare to manage everything by sideloading and things like that. So I don’t think we would have the success that we have today without the help of you guys.

Brad Scoggin
Well, I’m curious, as we wrap. I mean, you’re deep in this. You went deep in so many different areas, and we could have gone. We could have gone deep, deeper in a lot of those areas. But as you think about the future of VR in education, what do you think the future holds?

Louise Paepe
Well, I believe we’re just starting out. I mean, teachers are discovering the opportunities and the possibilities of using a headset. So this is just the beginning, and I believe that, I said it a couple of times before, but I really believe that, right now, every student has a laptop, and in the future, it will be in your headset. So it will be a sustainable part of our education.

Brad Scoggin
I love that. Louise, this has been awesome. I know you’re busy. Thank you so much for your time. I look forward to chatting again soon.

Louise Paepe
Likewise. Thank you so much for having me.

Brad Scoggin
Well, I love Louise and RTC’s approach. They just went after it, right? They, I mean, they were very methodical, but they’re starting deployment being a thousand devices is pretty significant. And I love that they were very thoughtful in the initial pilot. They started with the custom content, and then so many pieces, so much complexity in the way they had to do their rollout. And it just feels like they’ve been just so thoughtful. I think a lot that that we can learn. Anyone can learn from hearing her story.

Will Stackable
I was thinking the same thing. And I’m gonna make sure we link some of the resources in the show notes. Be sure to check them out. The one that, in particular, I think everybody should look at is they have a monster spreadsheet of all the content they’re using with tons of details. I was pulling it up as we were talking, and I think it could be really helpful. So of course we have the ArborXR directory, which is, you know, an incredible resource for any organization looking to find extra content. And if you have an ArborXR account, you can log in and get access to dozens of demo apps, both educational and training. So be sure to check that out. But yeah, it’s always fun to see a sophisticated XR program. And then they’re actually doing documentation and sharing it. It’s a great resource for the community.

Brad Scoggin
Yeah. And it probably goes without saying, but I think one common thing we’ve seen with the successful rollouts is that they just they pause just a bit, right? They take a little bit more time to do the research. And Louise and team have done a lot of research and they’re making some of that available. So make sure you check that out. And as always, we appreciate your time. You can find us anywhere you listen to your podcasts and we’ll see you next time.