10 Ways VR is Being Utilised for Learning
A common argument made about the use of VR in learning is that the applications for it are limited. If you’ve been following Next World on LinkedIn and Facebook recently, then you’ll have noticed we’ve been providing some examples that counter that argument.
Just in case you missed them, here’s a list of 10 different ways that VR is being utilised for learning across a variety of business settings.
#1 Empathy Building
Empathy is an important skill to have in the healthcare industry and Embodied Labs uses VR to help it’s clients train their employees in this important skill. Trainees don a VR headset and put themselves in the shoes of a patient with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and more.
The goal is to build empathy in the participants and existing neurological research backs up the effectiveness of this form of training, as it stimulates a user’s sensory receptors, which in turn creates new neural pathways in the user.
Read the full article we posted on this here.
#2 Disciplinary and Termination
Letting an employee go is a difficult process. Be too blunt or make other missteps in the process, and you can be left with an employee causing a scene in the office.
Barry is a fictional human being inside a VR experience who’s sole purpose is to be fired over and over again. He’s just one of the many VR characters that have been created by Talespin, a company that offers a variety of VR experiences that help teach ‘soft’ management skills such as how to fire an employee.
Check out the full article we posted here.
#3 Surgery & Medicine
Johnson & Johnson (J&J) teamed up with Osso VR this year to distribute up to 200 Oculus Quest headsets throughout the U.S. to train surgeons through VR simulations of various operations.
VR has shown plenty of promise already in the medical industry, J&J has just decided to be the innovators in the space and make themselves the first to push this technology out into the industry.
Read about J&J’s full plans here.
#4 HR & Organisational Culture
Having a culture education strategy will always pose a challenge of time. How can off-task time be reduced without dampening the educational impact? VR holds a solution, with standardised delivery, coupled with the creation of a personalised experience.
With the hardware and software becoming more affordable than it ever has been, VR is opening doors in this space as well.
Get all the details on how VR will be improving HR & Organisational Culture here.
#5 Discrimination
MIT noticed a lack of diversity in the types of people represented in VR experiences and created an experience which captures how participants perceive race, looking to see what sort of biases they have been taught in their upbringing.
The experience puts the user in the shoes of a young African-American girl, whose teacher has accused her of plagiarism despite having clearly completed the task on her own talents. Participants can navigate the discriminative scenario and the experience will analyse the responses to determine how the participant has been socialised to think about ethnicity.
Check out the full story behind this experience here.
#6 Pregnancy
Labour pains aren’t an enjoyable experience by any stretch of the imagination, but VR has found a way to help with this too.
Cedars Sinai hospital in California used immersive VR experiences of relaxing scenarios (e.g. a walk on the beach) with pregnant women, who found that they felt a reduction in their labour pains thanks to the experience.
Check out the full article here.
#7 Sport
Concussions are a big concern in any contact sport, especially when younger players are involved, those that could still be developing into the older years of their life.
TeachAids and Stanford University teamed up and created CrashCourse VR – a free app for the Oculus Go and Oculus Quest which teaches young athletes about concussions and what can be done to treat a concussion when it occurs.
See the full story on how football is being made safer here.
#8 Emergency Preparedness
Emergency response personnel are typically trained through scripted simulations of events from the past. These have turned out to be not only an ineffective means of training but an expensive one as well.
With VR on the rise, agencies gain access to a number of varied and unique training scenarios, which lets personnel better prepare for emergency situations, where just about anything can happen.
The content is already being used in Austin, Texas, where the University of Texas is working together with Austin-Travis County EMS, developing a VR experience that will better prepare medics.
Read the full article we posted about this here.
#9 Retail
Retailers have quickly picked up on the benefits of VR, both from a learning perspective and from a consumer perspective.
Walmart now uses Oculus Go headsets, incorporating Virtual Reality experiences into their staff training, using it to help them find suitable candidates for management positions in stores.
The company has even stated that they are seeing better results from those using the VR content in their training, citing a 10% to 15% improvement in test scores.
On the consumer side, Toms has been using VR with its customers, letting them experience their Virtual Giving Trip so they can see how their purchase is impacting the world.
Read more about how these businesses are leveraging the power of VR here.
#10 Safety & Compliance
VR is an excellent tool for training people for high-risk situations where the consequences can be extremely severe, even fatal in some instances.
UPS has been placing their drivers into VR simulations since 2017, with other companies starting to jump on the train to add immersive VR learning experiences to their training methods.
Read the full article we posted on this here.
These are just a few examples of what can be done with the power of VR. Here at Next World Enterprises, we’re looking to further the use of this technology in safety and induction spaces and make the content more affordable for business than ever.
We’ve already partnered with Harness, bringing our high-quality, immersive and gamified VR experiences into their accredited training courses with fantastic results.