You will have a clearer vision of:
- What is VR training?
- Who can use it?
- How does it work?
Why switch to virtual reality for vocational training in industry?
There are many benefits to using virtual reality to train your employees or students in industrial trades.
Let’s look at some of them.
Improve participant engagement
As a trainer, you should know that context is a very important factor in training and essential to good learning.
You are constantly looking for new and more effective ways to enable your learners to better assimilate knowledge and improve their engagement.
And what better way than a virtual interactive learning environment to put them in real life situations?
Your students, apprentices or employees will learn more from an interactive experience than from sitting in a chair listening or watching a video.
Virtual reality is an individualized approach that allows your learners to be actors and not spectators.
They are directly affected and can improve their personal knowledge and skills.
They are more motivated to learn, because it concerns them directly and gives them the opportunity to focus on their weak points.
As the saying goes: “You learn by doing”!
Limit the risks by arousing emotions
To stay in the world of proverbs, we’ll quote this one “It’s by making mistakes that we learn.”
Making mistakes makes a memory more impactful. A dangerous situation or a stressful situation is more easily remembered.
But the training is not given with the aim of endangering the participants, on the contrary, we want to prevent the risks of accidents.
This is one of the most important benefits of immersive training: to train your employees in complete safety while creating strong emotions that allow them to better assimilate the knowledge.
For example, let’s take an apprentice in the construction industry who must learn how to install scaffolding on a construction site.
Virtual reality allows to avoid training this apprentice directly on the field, where he risks to make mistakes, and to make a fall of more than 10m high.
The immersive training teaches him the right gestures and placements to adopt, while putting him in a real-life situation.
In the video below, for example, the person who interacts in a virtual reality scaffolding module feels the sensation of emptiness and the risk of falling. He also feels the danger of the weather, by wind and heavy rain.
Advancing in prevention means reducing the risk of accidents now and in the future!
Save time
The immersive nature of virtual reality training allows your students or employees to learn and retain more than they would with traditional training methods.
In essence, this means that training times are significantly reduced while remaining as effective as traditionally time-consuming one-on-one training methods.
For example, Nationwide Insurance conducted a small benchmark of its employee flood training. (source)
The company had its experts move to Ohio and flood a basement (yes, literally).
This training took 3 hours, not including the travel.
On the other hand, they did the same training, but in virtual reality.
This training lasted 25min, without having to travel and without having to flood a basement.
Nationwide Insurance evaluated the effectiveness of the virtual reality training by comparing the test results of the experts who took the training in Ohio.
The verdict?
Their scores were exactly the same.
In short, immersive training saves valuable time without losing efficiency.
Reduce training costs
One of the main benefits of using VR training is that it can be much more cost-effective than traditional teaching methods.
While there is an initial cost for equipment and software, once your virtual reality training program is up and running, you can repeat it as many times as you like, regardless of how many employees or students need it.
An added beneficial point is that virtual reality is becoming more common, making VR much more affordable.
Immersive training has other financial benefits as well.
You save a lot of money on consumables.
Let’s take the example of an auto body painting apprentice. The cost of training in paint and bodywork is colossal!
A simulator to learn how to properly use a paint gun in VR can save up to 50% of your training costs and significantly reduce the learning time of your students.
Track and correct the skills of your learners
When performing a task on a daily basis, it is difficult to see, or admit, that we are doing it wrong.
Immersive learning allows learners to track, assess and correct their habits to develop their skills.
Thanks to the analysis platforms provided with VR simulators, you can discover their weaknesses in order to rectify them.
This analysis is essential to improve productivity in the workplace.
Bad habits can greatly affect a company’s performance and create serious repercussions, such as material costs or work-related accidents.
Virtual reality training can prevent this!
Conclusion
Immersive training allows participants to focus all their attention on the training and helps minimize distractions.
Indeed, with a VR headset on your head, it is immediately more difficult to glance at your smartphone!
This complete immersion makes training sessions incredibly engaging and even fun at times.
It’s also a safe environment where participants can make mistakes that in real life could be costly and even dangerous.
All of these benefits contribute to a better assimilation of knowledge and effective learning.
At Mimbus, we develop VR training solutions for a wide range of environments in many industries. Our team will be happy to discuss and support you in the installation and use of VR equipment for training purposes. Contact us for more information!
