In mainstream corporate learning, there is a lack of use cases for (and general knowledge of) applying virtual reality technology to help enhance learning outcomes. What works? What does not work? What have companies learned to date? How can you use VR most effectively in the enterprise? And why is VR, unlike the eLearning model, “community-based” and not vendor-driven?

As an instructional designer, trainer, or coach, how do you turn the lessons you develop into realities that the learner can appreciate, retain, and react appropriately to? Many training solutions struggle to simulate authentic experiences because the training is either designed to prevent something (like sexual harassment) or to prepare for a rare scenario (such as responding to a medical emergency).

VR isn’t new to the training world. For decades, high-end simulators and fully immersive VR experiences have been deployed and applied successfully to various fields. But these experiences have—until recently—been limiting, as few had access to the high-end equipment needed and, even worse, there can be an inherent disconnect between the virtual and real world, which can sometimes make applying knowledge challenging.

The world of work is shifting. As globalization and the gig economy continue to grow, there will be an increased need to improve the way people learn, collaborate, and innovate together while they are geographically apart. Virtual reality has great potential to address this growing need.

Virtual reality has exploded over the past year, extending to conversations in the mobile, gaming, and video landscape. There’s a rapidly rising interest in how to use this new technology for learning and performance. With “VR” now one of the hottest buzzwords, how much is hype and how much is substance?

Healthcare education about dementia typically focuses on increasing understanding through didactic methods (i.e., scripto-visual materials) that address knowledge rather than emotion and experience. A scan of educational technologies for dementia revealed limited products using animated VR and facilitated in-person or physically constructed simulations. These approaches are not cost-effective, sustainable, or easily scalable. Furthermore, these have not been evaluated for effectiveness or impact.

A new generation of virtual reality headsets is bringing immersion to new levels—the feeling of actually being in another place. Imagine strapping on a headset and practicing emergency response procedures in a realistic-looking computer-generated environment. Or experiencing racial biases from a first-person perspective. Or sending new employees on a virtual field trip to far-flung company locations. Evidence of the effectiveness of VR in learning is overwhelming, and both VR hardware and software are now becoming more affordable. Still, there are few case studies that demonstrate how to leverage VR for learning. What do you need to understand to use this medium more effectively in L&D?

As products and services become more complex, providing the right training or performance support has the biggest impact on improving proficiency. Augmented and virtual reality can be the link that enables you to deliver your valuable content directly to your audience when they need it most. 

Virtual reality is no longer just an expensive curiosity, but a real option for many trainers and educators. Like many new media, it runs the risk of being used badly. Strategies and methods from earlier media are not necessarily suited to new media. If you apply classroom methods to VR, what will you miss? If you apply video strategies to VR, what will you get wrong?

The ability to explore an environment in all directions offers exciting possibilities for telling stories and engaging audiences. But how do you make the exploration truly interactive so it opens up more learning opportunities? From hazard identification to virtual tours to situational decision-making, where will this exciting new technology prove most beneficial to workforce performance?

Eight out of 10 college graduates expect to receive formal training from their first employer. The training industry has struggled to satisfy this need—partly due to a lack of affordable and appropriate media, and partly due to training programs that ultimately lack engagement. With 24/7 availability of on-demand, high-quality media, the digital workforce is becoming even more disengaged from these outdated training solutions. Fortunately, the recent growth of virtual reality and of media and graphics has made top-shelf multimedia technologies more affordable and accessible to trainers. There’s now an opportunity to create training solutions that can compete with today’s entertainment media, making training much more engaging and effective.

Virtual reality offers a promising new strategy for training, engaging learners in a realistic and 360-degree environment. But while the skills transfer possibilities are enormous, there have been two major challenges with using this medium in L&D. The first was the technology cost: In the past, VR head-mounted displays were too expensive for most companies and schools to consider. The second was content creation: Most L&D professionals lacked the capability to design VR environments and integrate them effectively in training. However, a lot changed with the release of Google Cardboard, as this technology allows organizations to invest in affordable head-mounted VR displays. Cost has become less of a concern; now it’s just a matter of how to design effective VR content.

When you begin to explore virtual reality programming, you quickly realize it requires learning many new things across several disciplines. It can be difficult to determine where to start, as the expanding list that begins with VR programming grows to include 3-D graphics, user interface conventions across varying VR hardware, how to set up and use a VR headset, where to find the best VR applications, and more.

On the manufacturing plant floor, production is crucial. No matter how well trained the employees are, there is a loss of retention between training delivery and application. The longer it takes to close that gap, the longer production is halted.

After years of existing mostly in the world of science fiction, virtual reality is finally ready for its close-up. With VR normalizing itself within the consumer culture, the interest in using these technologies for learning and performance is growing. But where can curious learning professionals go to learn more about the power and potential of VR? The answer is simple: gaming.

Virtual reality platforms for learning are being popularized across all industries, from healthcare to automotive. But learning how to create VR content in VR remains an under-explored area.

As you begin to develop VR and AR experiences for L&D, it’s important to consider how people interact with the content in your digital world. And as these mediums continue to grow and evolve, so too will your options for interfacing with them. If you’re developing VR or AR content and looking to take your learning experiences to another level, it’s worth investigating an unexpected way to interact with your content: gesture control devices.

Over the past two years, augmented reality and virtual reality have started to bloom in the consumer marketplace. These technologies enable all types of learning and education experiences across all of the outcomes in Bloom’s Taxonomy. In other words, AR and VR are poised to break into the mainstream of education and learning.

Moving your organization forward with new approaches to learning and development can be challenging—especially when the new approaches involve nontraditional ideas or technologies. Our Overcoming Barriers sessions bring together people who have already walked this path to share what they have learned. Join our panel of experts as they discuss how you can overcome the most common barriers to incorporating virtual reality into your training and development programs.

Virtual training is not new. It has been evolving since the beginning of the century, and much has been learned over the years about what works, what doesn’t work, and what skills are required to succeed in both design and development. The advent of AR and VR technology adds a new layer that L&D professionals need to understand.

Technology with the potential to transform learning is here: Virtual realities, augmented realities, and mixed realities are not just bleeding-edge tools anymore. Much of the pioneering work that came from early adopters and the military is now having mainstream impact. When L&D professionals contemplate using these new realities for learning, they often focus on the technical side of how to create these experiences. But what about the psychological considerations you should take into account when designing content for these new mediums?

Effective instructional design maximizes learner motivation, cognitive capacity for information processing, and learning transfer. For any given training, the most appropriate design should be informed by a careful consideration of training context characteristics as well as the strengths and limitations of the technology.

There are more and more tools entering the marketplace that allow you to quickly create 360-degree virtual reality images. However, the final results aren’t always what you’d like: The stitching of VR images in these tools, unfortunately, is not always perfect. Also, there are often inconsistencies both above and below the VR image. These flaws can take away from the immersiveness of the experience you’re creating and even get in the way of learning.

You’ve decided that 360-degree video looks promising and you want to try it out, but you have questions: What do you need to get started? What should you watch out for? Do you have the skill set to do it? What are the benefits? What is it going to cost? And probably more.

For virtual reality to achieve its goals, instructors need to create presence—the feeling of being in the virtual scene. Presence is what differentiates VR from video, and it’s what gives VR its unique power to affect learners. Virtual reality content doesn’t always do this well, leaving users less immersed than instructors intended, and creating weaker experiences and learning impact.

When any technology is used for training or performance support, you want to make sure it’s actually effective. That’s why the impact needs to be examined through a performance lens to determine whether the technology really enables people to do their work better. This analysis of the context is increasingly important to the development and deployment of AR and VR.

There is enormous potential for what L&D professionals can achieve by harnessing the levels of engagement available with virtual reality and augmented reality. Hardware and infrastructure suppliers continue to push the capabilities of these technologies forward. However, there is an enormous gap between those advancing technologies and the realities of today’s learning landscape.

Navigating larger-scale virtual spaces presents difficulties for learners. The difficulties and the solutions parallel those in eLearning but take unique forms in VR. How do learners know where they are? How do learners know where to go or look next? How can multiple paths be presented and organized?

Technology is being used in many settings to augment work, but mainly in task completion. VR and immersive 360-degree video, however, can aid people in more emotionally challenging situations. The Hospital for Sick Children sought to help children who face severe hospital-based anxiety in the preoperative area. The team also faced the challenge of making 360-degree videos acceptable to parents and healthcare professionals.

For years, training departments and instructional designers have struggled to develop quality mobile learning. Users don’t want to access eLearning courses designed for a computer or watch 30-minute training videos from their phone while using up all their data. And technologies like VR and AR sound expensive and difficult to make scalable for a company.

As virtual and augmented reality technologies continue to advance, it becomes more important than ever to determine how best to utilize these tools in eLearning and training programs.

Two of the more important elements in quality eLearning are interactivity and storytelling. Virtual reality enables you to take those two elements to new heights, but it also presents new and unique challenges.

Many global companies today are aiming to develop deep understanding of the human side of organizations, markets, and societies. The challenge many organizations face, as they seek to develop their leaders, is how to bring about this level of insight and understanding without sending all of their managers and leaders around the world. Enter 360-degree immersive video.

Virtual reality has great potential for learning and development. Like any new technology, VR also comes with risks, such as investments of time, money, and other resources. To minimize these risks, it’s important to do everything you can to get things right the first time.