How Virtual Reality is Training the Next Generation Workforce

Could your future career training get you hiring a VR headset? Read our review on the new approach to education.

Career training can be monotonous. Anyone who has been made to sit through endless power points or read excessively long booklets knows that it’s not one of the most engaging tasks. Although completely necessary, training can often feel like a chore – even interactive simulators can lack the user engagement that new 3D visualization promises to bring to employees of the future.

Now, a new and unexpected training tool is ditching 2D training, and showing the world the possibilities of virtual education. The Samsung Gear VR, an affordable and compatible virtual reality headset, is the new learning technology using its three dimensional platform to place trainees at the heart of their situation. It can transform the way we perceive and practice training, teaching, and learning.

 

WHAT IS IT?

The essence of Virtual Reality training is rooted in the idea that we learn by experiencing. It has the capability to place staff in whatever situation they are being trained for, as opposed to them just hearing about it. This feature offers its users four main advantages of regular training that general education does not quite have:

  • It engages the user with a hands on, immersive approach.
  • It can recreate any environment, meaning minimised travel and easier accessibility, reaching a wider audience.
  • It can place dangerous scenarios in a completely safe and controlled environment, reducing anxiety and minimising all risk.
  • It is reusable, meaning trainees can gain feedback, improve, and practice.

Students and trainees can simply hire or rent a Gear VR headset in order to: train for the military, be an architect, or perform surgery. It’s designed to help people develop the essential skills they need to excel in their chosen career. VR also takes the necessary but monotonous training topics, such as health and safety, and tackles them with a more realistic and interactive approach.

Now many companies are creating applications tailored to educate their workers in the best way possible.

 

HOW IT WORKS

For example, oil companies have adopted virtual reality to train their personnel since 2014. This reduces the risks involved in the dangerous profession through proper educational engagement with their staff. This is not the only industry which uses VR to help save lives.

By training medics with a hands on and immersive approach, the world of healthcare also gives its trainees invaluable first hand experience that was previously limited. The reduction of anxiety and elimination of any risk to patients, means surgeons will be able to gain confidence, and increase their level of performance in real life scenarios. To find out more about VR in medicine, read our article.

The Australia based company ‘Sentient Computing’ also believes in “learning by doing”, and uses HTC Vive technology to coach their workers. By doing so, the training time of their personnel is cut by 70% yet knowledge retention increases.

Virgin Atlantic is even utilizing the Samsung Gear VR in the training of their airline pilots and hosts. Pilots currently have to physically travel to receive training at a particular facility in the UK. Implementing VR would reduce physical travel time. There is even talk of a Gear watch to help hosts and staff in the airport perform their tasks to the highest standard.

VR is even making an impact in an organization which places training at its core: the military. The new technology allows soldiers to simulate flights, action on the battlefield, vehicle training, and battlefield medic training, while all personal danger is removed.

 

SAMSUNG GEAR VR AND TRAINING

The Samsung Gear VR is one of the more affordable yet quality headsets on the market. While it’s being used in many of the above examples, it also offers many educational experiences on a smaller and less career focussed scale for the wider public.

Applications such as ‘InMind VR’ and ‘InCell VR’ explore the brain, or delve into a human cell and offer a medical perspective. ‘Mars is a Real Place’ lets you view and explore Martian territory, and ‘Ocean Rift’ lets you inspect the world of the sea.

E-Learning Studios is a company all about new learning technology, and has been using VR to create educational simulations since 2013 in collaboration with Samsung Gear. Its website claims to ‘help your employees learn pretty much anything’.

Potential for live-stream training (applications which would allow headset owners to tap into live videos), along with new VR systems available at consumer prices brings the VR learning environment into the home. It allows those training, or ordinary people, to get an insight into a myriad of professions, and maybe get a taste of their future.