As businesses become more technologically driven, there is a need for a useful tool that boosts employees’ proficiency growth. Traditional classroom-based trainings are increasingly going to the past, giving way to immersive methods. The progressive approach allows to create a digital environment for facilitating active studying and upgrading individuals’ knowledge and skills. Such an approach may help to optimize the time for education, increase outcome, and motivates the team.
Based on cognitive and behavioral science, e-learning with AR and VR technologies represents a revolutionary method for impacting the corporate world. By adopting this cutting-edge technology and integrating it into your business processes, you can get incredible results in employees' self-improvement or skills upgrades. This article will describe innovative ways to support skills upgrading and adapt your enterprise to possible challenges in the working environment.
What is immersive learning?
As traditional classroom-based training mainly relies on data perception through writing and listening, it provides significant limitations to educational processes for employees. Each learner uniquely absorbs given materials. Some of them are predisposed to a kinesthetic or visual style. And in most cases, an opportunity to interact with the environment during content retention ensures a more accessible and inclusive studying. And here, immersive learning performs as an effective method for developing corporate workers’ appropriate knowledge and skills.
Content within innovative educational technology represents a digital, artificial space that simulates real-life events and trains employees to get ready for various situations within a safe space, called Virtual Reality (VR), and react to them in a proper way. Theoretical materials, scientific data, and spatial design are the key components of immersive learning, which improves customer experience (CX) and engagement levels.
VR education contributes to new skills acquisition and the perfection of existing ones. It transforms learners from passive spectators to activists who can influence the outcomes. And what is more crucial, the new method offers risk-free space with numerous tries to repeat and improve the result while measuring the progress. This approach almost has no limits for practicing personal opportunities, makes the learners stronger, and teaches how to stay calm in stressful situations (for doctors, firefighters, policemen, etc.)
Neuroscience research shows that an individual should change their brain conditions to activate the studying process. And here, immersive learning technologies provide an opportunity to create a digital area for stimulating the production of new neurons. The more brain sections will be involved in responding to the artificial space events (like an unfamiliar music auditory, the discussion format changes, or visual effect influence), the better result a person can reach.
The brain’s reaction to virtual world situations is similar to the live-streamed one. That’s why employees' responses to the modeled events become indicators of their performance in a natural working environment. Moreover, immersive learning VR helps to raise participants’ attention during course processing and improves their readiness and confidence.
There are several types of technology used in corporate training. Each of them advantageously influences the customer experience:
The actual VR, which is accessed and operated through earphones, VR headsets, and hand controllers (like Meta Quest, HTC Vive Pro, and others).
Augmented Reality (AR). It is a set of informational instructions and digital content within the virtual world, which can adopt any form and shape (flat, 2D, or realistic 3D).
Mixed features. They combine AR and VR technologies, anchoring digital content with real objects. Such assets may be visibly hidden by the natural environment.
360 film. This type is more often live-streamed than computer generated and is used for virtual trips presentation. The video limits participants’ interactions with the surroundings and describes the event from the creator's point of view.
And now, when we’ve become a little familiar with the immersive learning definition, let's figure out its main advantages for implementation in enterprise life.
The benefits of an immersive experience
Suppose an entrepreneur wants their workers to practice hard-to-reach or dangerous places, study new approaches, or try different actions before providing them in the real world. An immersive learning environment can become a unique safe method to achieve their goals. Here are the main pros of applying virtual systems for business training:
Interactivity. Participants can examine digital objects: zoom, push, shoot and rotate. High-quality 3D performance allows employees to feel themselves similarly to the actual working event and form a natural reaction.
Learners activity. Risk-free space allows even the most chained individuals to apply their abilities. As a result, they act more confident because their outcome is safe, and possible mistakes won’t be harmful to people or objects in reality.
Better comprehension. The immersive learning experience covers gaps caused by theoretical courses and gives more specific information on the examining subject or situation.
Distraction reducing. When employees fully dive into the educational VR, they become more concentrated and engaged with the material and don’t react to external noises.
Numerous repeats. Opposite to real-world, making several tries to practice people’s skills is cheaper and more secure. Educators can replay the training without additional costs on expendable materials.
Talking about immersive vs. experiential learning benefits, we can emphasize that in a gamified environment, trainees' actions lead to various non-linear possibilities instead of a single result. Therefore, one can analyze all the received results and choose the most optimum way that brings more positive solutions. Moreover, realization requires the 100% activation of participants' thinking abilities. Thus, immersive training solutions ensure an increase in overall employees’ readiness for the most unexpected situations in the real working space.
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What real problems are solved by immersive learning?
After the pandemic swept the world, many entrepreneurs appreciated the benefits of remote learning, allowing them to organize employees upgrading from the comfort of their homes or working places. As a perfect alternative to the remote teaching format, AR and VR approaches allowed providing fast, cost-saving, and effective education.
Although VR training programs require investments at the initial stage, they save money and effort for the enterprise in the future. Thus, when it comes to educating more than a thousand co-workers, the company's only available decision is to establish e-learning. It can be impossible to find a classroom for simultaneous training and may be too expensive in the long perspective. Instead, it’s easier to implement an immersive learning platform affordable for every participant, and it makes the process easy and comfortable.
If the company can’t afford to supply all the employees with VR hardware, it is possible to integrate Augmented Reality training software even without headsets. For example, learners can watch 360-degree films using a simple mobile device or pass their courses via avatar-based role games.
Still, we have not yet described why we can’t achieve perfect results with a distant education only. Let’s first figure out what remote learning means. It is a re-creating of typical classroom lessons without the actual audience presence. Employees process the training materials, performed in the form of instructions, presentations, or recorded webinars, make tasks, and control their academic performance (depending on app settings). And here, we face the main differences between remote and virtual learning: immersive courses provide the opportunity to practice the acquired knowledge in an appropriate environment.
Also, research states that with VR programs, employees study 1.5x times faster than in remote mode and 4x times more intensive than in traditional classes. Moreover, Virtual Reality solves the following cons of remote learning: workers feel twice more emotionally connected with their colleagues and organization in reaching common goals.
Studies also showed that remote learners benefit from using VR technologies because it allows them to become more focused on content due to their engaging design and game-based way of data performance.
Now we have a typical picture of virtual e-learning systems and their advantages for corporate studying. The next chapter will discuss the best practices of using immersive technology in different application spheres...
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