Are you spending thousands of dollars on your organization’s L&D programs but haven’t seen any significant output? Well, the problem can be in the format in which you are delivering these programs. Most of your employees are flooded with information, making it difficult for them to grasp and retain everything.
On top of that, in this digitalized world, boring passive learning is not enough to grab the attention of your employees. So, what is the solution to this problem? One of the numerous solutions is to introduce immersive learning in the workplace. After all, why do you think games like Beat Saber, Half-Life: Alyx, and Pokémon GO are so popular? It is because it gives the player the ability to engage all their senses in the gameplay, making it difficult for them to differentiate between what is real and what is virtual. But how can immersive learning be integrated into a workplace? In the article below, we will discuss that and look at its essential components that make integration easy.
What Is Immersive Learning?
Before we understand the components of immersive learning and the reasons for its rising popularity, let us understand what it actually means. Immersive learning is a format of learning in which the learner is provided with an interactive or virtual environment where they get hands-on experience of a particular concept or topic. The idea here is to create a close-to-real-life experience for the learner, where they learn from first-hand experiences and practical knowledge.
In a workplace, immersive learning transports the employee to a real-like scenario with the same tension, emotion, action, and ambiguity. This enables the learner to completely engage in the experience and learn from practical knowledge.
Immersive learning is particularly important in job roles where mistakes can be costly. For instance, immersive learning can be used in the medical industry to train a surgeon to perform open-heart surgery. This way, the surgeon will get hands-on experience prior to performing the surgery in reality. Immersive learning is also widely popular in sales and customer service. It helps organizations improve client interactions by enhancing the employees’ soft skills.
What Are The Major Components Of Immersive Learning?
Now that you have understood what immersive learning is, let us understand its essential components:
An Immersive Environment:
The most essential component of immersive learning is the environment. The environment must replicate a real-life scenario while considering the safety of the participants.
Storyline:
The scenario must have a storyline or narrative that guides the immersive learning experience. This allows the participants to connect with the scenario, helping them better retain the information.
Engagement:
The scenario should be engaging, encouraging the learner to interact. The interaction must also lead to a decision-making process, which marks a certain development in the learning program.
Now, the question is how to achieve an interactive and engaging immersive learning environment. It is through the use of technologies such as:
Virtual Reality:
Virtual reality creates a virtual environment for the learners. To implement VR, learners usually need to put on a VR headset that transports them to an environment created by the software.
This technology gives learners the opportunity to fully interact with the surroundings, which includes virtual but close-to-real situations and different characters.
Augmented Reality:
Augmented reality adds a virtual layer to the real-world spaces. It transforms the real-world environment by adding different objects or scenarios that create an engaging and interactive environment.
Simulation:
Simulation creates a real-world scenario but in a safe and controlled environment. It is a great learning methodology to implement learning approaches such as “learning through failure,” “intelligence failure,” and much more. This is because simulation creates an environment where learners can fail and learn from their mistakes.
What Are The Benefits Of Immersive Learning?
Hands-on immersive learning is more effective than passive learning. It helps individuals get their hands dirty, learn from their mistakes, and experience real-life scenarios, but with utmost safety in mind. Here are a few benefits of this learning approach:
Maximum Engagement And Retention:
The first benefit of immersive learning is maximum engagement and retention. Immersive learning transports the learner into an engaging environment when they are required to interact with their surroundings and respond to different situations. This helps enhance the retention of knowledge among employees.
Personalized Learning Experience:
Another noteworthy thing about immersive learning is that it offers a personalized learning experience. Don’t we all love things that are exclusively made for us? Well, this is what this learning approach is all about. The data that is generated through this learning process provides valuable insights into the overall progress of the team/ the employee. This showcases how an individual is performing, as well as their pain points and areas of improvement. Providing employees with a personalized learning experience makes them feel valued, which in turn helps build a loyal relationship.
Clear Analytics:
The results from traditional learning approaches are mostly vague. This is because one can’t measure progress. Although these learning approaches do come with assessment tests such as quizzes and MCQs, the results have many discrepancies. Overall, they are a poor indicator of how efficiently the learner will implement what they have learned.
But this is not the case with immersive learning. Since it requires active participation and emotional response, educators can directly analyse its impact. In immersive learning, learners need to respond in real time, which is similar to what they would experience in the real world. This aspect makes it more effective and provides a clear picture of how impactful the learning experience was.
Conclusion
Immersive learning is one of the most popular choices for corporate training. It is engaging, grasps the right attention, and is highly effective. It provides clear data, ensuring a better understanding of how the learners are progressing. Overall, it just adds all the essential components of an effective learning module into one close-to-real-life experience. So, if you are still using passive learning in your L&D programs, it is time you reconsider the decision and use technological advancements to your benefit.