Virtual Reality as a Learning Tool
The evolution of learning has changed quite drastically over the past hundred years, long gone are the days of teachers writing on chalkboards. So here we are in 2016, looking to the future and the most effective possible ways to deliver training. Virtual reality (VR), is still quite new, however it looks like it will be the wave of the future.
According to the “Cone of Learning” from Edgar Dale, after two weeks, the human brain tends to remember 10% of what it reads, 20% of what it hears and 90% of what it does or simulates. If this is the case, spending 20 minutes in a VR training simulation to learn a specific skill could be more worthwhile than a full day of listening to someone explain it to you, 2 hours of reading about it or 1 hour of watching it.
On-the-job training is a great example of how this modality of training would be effective. Being able to submerse the learner in a virtual world that is the closest possibility the real thing, is the best way to train someone before putting them into the real world. Think about hazardous jobs where people could actually get injured if they didn’t know what they were doing. You could even use is for soft-skills training, have someone put on the goggles and practice having a “difficult conversation” with co-worker.
It’s definitely a work in progress but could you imagine the possibilities it would create for training?
