Extended Reality: Immersive learning for the future workforce
September 24, 2018
RESEARCH REPORT
In brief
In brief
- As accelerating digitization changes skill requirements, the future workforce requires a more active and ongoing approach to training.
- Extended Reality (XR), combining real and virtual environments and human-machine interactions, can help provide experiential learning workers need.
- The enterprise Virtual Reality (VR) training market is expected to grow to $6.3 billion by 2022 from $216 million in 2018, according to ABI Research.
- Benefits of XR-enabled immersive training include lower costs, increased employee engagement and the ability to mirror real-life situations.
Immersive learning is still emerging, but it’s clear that, given the broad range of employee-training applications, XR technology will be critical to the enterprise of the future.
Indeed, industries with high-risk working environments, such as energy, manufacturing or construction, are already reaping the benefits of immersive learning. Now, other industries are exploring the space.
However, business leaders should not use XR just for the sake of trying out the latest flashy tech. If workers have an unfavorable experience, it will hurt more than help.
Well-planned immersive learning can significantly improve the skills and retention rates of your future workforce. We’ve mapped out the benefits, as well as key considerations before you move forward.
#ExtendedReality provides a new level of experiential learning to help business create the #FutureWorkforce
Benefits of immersive learning
Mirror real-life situations
Immersive learning is effective at emphasizing things through visualization. By providing environments closely mimic real-life situations, employees can reach greater levels of expertise in less time.
End of distance
Through immersive experiences, businesses can tap expertise in thousands of skills from anywhere in the world. XR can also provide remote guided tours and remote collaboration.
Reduced operational costs
Organizations can cut expenses on employee travel and transporting equipment to training locations. Trainers themselves can also be part of the XR programming, so companies can reduce faculty costs.
Increased engagement
With the ability to build-in gamification, immersive learning can be fun. When trainees are engaged and interested, it leads to better retention.
Learning through mistakes
Training for hazardous environments, as well as simulations that allow individuals to practice presentations, reduce behaviors that do not support inclusion or that could negatively impact a client deal can all be achieved through XR.
Better analytics
XR captures enriched user data—behavioral, eye tracking, heat maps and gesture tracking.
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Enterprise adoption of immersive learning: Industries with high-risk working environments such as energy, industrial, manufacturing or construction are already experiencing the benefits of immersive learning. Now other industries are exploring the space, including: Medical training for Students: University School of Medicine in Atlanta uses VR for training surgeons.
40%
fewer mistakes than surgeons who are conventionally trained
Retail training: Walmart uses VR to prepare store managers for Black Friday, America’s biggest shopping day. Walmart is planning to deploy the technology across 200 training centers.
80%
savings in training time
Outside sales reps (OSR) training: United Rentals uses immersive learning for OSRs to bring construction sites into the classroom
40%
reduction in training time
Important considerations for enterprise immersive learning
- Identify meaningful immersive use cases - Immersive learning is more successful in use cases that require a first-person perspective and interactive practice and test response.
- Design a compelling user experience - Complex user interfaces (UI) that have a steep learning curve will be counterproductive; instead, design UI that’s simple and fun.
- Build analytics from the start - With VR analytics and automated reports, companies can train, manage and evaluate employees’ hard and soft skill sets to improve training effectiveness.
- Choose appropriate technology - The most important technology decisions center on what type of XR medium is most appropriate (AR or VR) for the use case, along with other factors.
- Establish a governance board - Immersive learning will be more successful if guided by strong governance board that identifies success metrics and more.
Get immersed with us
We’ve developed a five-point plan to help clients adopt immersive learning and prepare their future workforces:
- XR strategy – We identify relevant learning areas and conduct a cost-benefit analysis of areas identified.
- Solution architecture – We create detailed technical solutions, performance analysis and road map for an immersive learning implementation.
- Experience development – We design and develop the complete immersive learning experience, including 3-D asset creation/conversion, animation, game-engine development and more.
- Content factory – We provide creation and conversion of 3-D assets at scale to continuously evolve and update training experiences.
- Run operations – We execute operational processes and maintain immersive training solutions that meet success metrics and improve employee job performance.
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