IE University Uses AR Technology To Go Back in Time to Recognize the Role of the Professor throughout History

As part of it’s “The Next 50” initiative,  IE University has used augmented reality to design a time travel experience, installing technological portals on its historic Segovia campus, located in the 15th-century convent of Santa Cruz La Real, as well as at its María de Molina headquarters in the financial center of Madrid, and at IE Tower, its new technological and sustainable headquarters in the north of Madrid. These portals provide a technological immersion to access the classroom in each historical era and recognize the role of the teacher in education.

The AR portals provide a journey with five levels: the Stone Age, Ancient History, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the future, through which IE University students, professors, and staff can discover what the classroom was like in each era and recognize the key role of the professor.

Visitors to the portals are immersed in the experiences of the various levels. For example, in the Stone Age level, cave dwellers experienced fire, knew how to make it, and expressed themselves through rock art in caves. In this era of education, humanity saw the birth of agriculture, which would be passed down with mentors to the next generations. Thousands of years later, in Ancient History, disciplines that have forged our current thinking, including philosophy, writing, and mathematics were founded in Greece, Rome, Egypt, and China. The Renaissance marked a turning point in education. Thinkers, artists and writers like Da Vinci, Erasmus, Descartes, and Shakespeare led a new era for science and the humanities. And during the Industrial Revolution, education broadened its impact, becoming accessible at more social and economic levels.

The Next 50 initiative looks to the future in order to understand what society will face in the coming decades in relation to education, technology, global governance, and sustainability, among other fields, and to prepare for the challenges that will mark our lives and the new world of work. Each historical movement, each evolution of thought, discovery, invention and innovation have led us to who we are today, and allow us to look at The Next 50 years from a new dimension. At IE University we work looking to the future, to take a new step and continue advancing.