Extraordinary Endeavors in Turbulent Times: Asian Innovation, Inclusion, and Impact during COVID-19

ASIA BUSINESS COUNCIL HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 5 2 Lenovo (Mainland China) Extraordinary Endeavors in Turbulent Times More importantly, in these unusual times of social distancing, the VR classroom aims to immerse students directly into the material they are learning. “During a time of restricted travel because of COVID-19, VR has given students access to places and spaces that would otherwise be unavailable to them. These could be travel destinations like the Taj Mahal, foreign settings and wildlife environments, or specialized training environments such as scientific laboratories. With VR, people can be transported to these places, broadening their horizons and deepening their skills,” explained Henderson. Of course, VR is also a particularly effective way to engage and spark curiosity among students through experiences that cannot take place in person – with or without COVID-19. For example, a recent Baltimore Public Schools field trip took place inside the human digestive track. 13 In general, VR is also seen to help improve students’ interpersonal skills. In the words of Henderson, “VR can improve empathy by putting the students in the shoes of someone from another culture or another time. Students can practice challenging situations and difficult conversations in VR by playing the role of a social worker visiting a troubled home, a store clerk facing hostile customers, or by simulating the experience of someone with autism. This allows students to take someone else’s perspective and practice emotionally challenging situations in a safe way where it is okay to fail and try again.” For students with special needs, schools have also used soothing VR environments to help students relax and learn how to control their emotions instead of lashing out or taking medicine to calm themselves down. Stepping up Cybersecurity Measures during the Pandemic Across its virtual classroom offerings, a key focus for Lenovo during the pandemic has been to enhance cybersecurity. Henderson noted that education is a high-risk area for cyberattacks and that cybersecurity becomes more complicated in an online learning environment. There are increasing security risks when students are in remote locations instead of the physical school building – students are often using devices that store their personal information but are not equipped with cybersecurity protections. Apart from cyberattacks, another concern is content filtering, something that is also increasingly difficult to manage in a remote learning environment where school networks are unable to control incoming traffic to student devices. To address this problem, Lenovo developed a number of tools to prevent students from accessing certain types of content and to alert the school if they are searching for harmful information. For example, Lenovo’s classroom “VR can improve empathy by putting the students in the shoes of someone from another culture or another time. Students can practice challenging situations and difficult conversations in VR... This allows students to take someone else’s perspective and practice emotionally challenging situations in a safe way where it is okay to fail and try again.”