Immersive learning has taken L&D programs by storm. It has become the cornerstone of corporate training and given us a strong foundation to improve the learning experience of the employees in an organization. According to studies, including immersive learning experiences in corporate training can improve knowledge retention by 75%.
In immersive learning, users use more than just their senses; they see, hear, and interact with virtual objects, which leave an everlasting impact on them. But how do you include this learning approach in your training sessions? Well, creating an immersive learning environment is the first step towards giving your employees an impactful learning experience.
If you are still wondering how to create an immersive learning environment, you’ve landed at the right place. Let us look at the building blocks of immersive learning that will help create an engaging learning environment for your employees.
Building Blocks of Immersive Learning:
Immersive learning engages all the senses of a learner to create an experience that is engaging and easy to understand. Therefore, let us look at the building blocks of immersive learning that will help you create a lasting impact on your employees.
- Sensory Engagement:
One of the building blocks of immersive learning is sensory engagement, which helps learners feel like they are in the situation that is being presented in front of them. Engaging one or multiple sensory experiences in learning makes users more involved.
Some examples of sensory engagement include auditory, visual, tactile, and olfactory stimulation. Technologies such as virtual and augmented reality help create an environment that engages all the senses and creates an immersive learning experience.
- Active participation:
Immersive learning requires the learner’s active participation, which makes the learning process truly immersive. Moreover, encouraging learners to interact with the environment and make decisions helps them feel more in control of the process, ultimately leading to more engagement.
You can encourage active participation during a learning program by incorporating interactive elements such as games and quizzes, dynamic user experience, and responsive programs.
- Emotional connection:
Creating an emotional connection is a crucial element of every learning process. Building an emotional connection helps learners resonate with what is taught in the module.
You can do so through compelling storytelling, an evocative environment, and relatable characters. This will help create an emotional bond with the users, leading them to be more involved in the learning process.
Technologies Behind Immersive Learning:
Virtual reality:
Virtual reality creates an immersive learning environment with infinite possibilities and without any physical boundaries. This technology lets you discover the undiscovered world virtually- ranging from the depth of the oceans to the heights of the clouds with the help of VR devices. When you put the VR headset on, you can see and hear the virtual world around you. You feel like you are present in the situation mentally and emotionally without actually being there physically. Therefore, thanks to this immersive learning technology, you can be “on the job” without actually being on the job.
Let us understand this with an example. For people who work in the front end and deal with clients daily, developing excellent soft skills is very crucial. With the help of virtual reality, you can create “real scenarios” for your employees where they get first-hand experience dealing with different clients.
Augmented reality:
Moving to the next immersive learning technology, augmented reality combines virtual reality and the actual world. AR technology lets you engage with virtual creatures that appear in the real world. It can be integrated with interactive 3D models, simulations, or animation related to the subject matter to provide the learner with a real-life experience in a safe environment, making abstract concepts more tangible and easier to understand.
Mixed reality:
In mixed reality, the line between the real and the unreal is blurred, creating a learning experience that encourages innovation and creativity. It combines elements of virtual reality and augmented reality into the learning environment. For instance, imagine a new product you have just created materialize in front of you with the help of mixed reality. Mixed reality uses the same headset as VR but is often integrated with a camera that scans the user’s surroundings.
360 film:
Imagine watching a film where you are not just a mere viewer but also experiencing it. This is what 360 film brings to you. It brings you a powerful 360-degree video that changes the whole landscape of media consumption. With this technology, you can glance up, down, left, and right while viewing the screen, which gives you the illusion that you are right there at the center where all the action is taking place.
Gamification:
Human beings have a natural inclination towards things that have a sense of thrill, adventure, and competition, which is why gamification is increasingly becoming popular in the world of immersive learning. This technology adds gaming elements such as badges, points, leaderboards, and levels to make the learning experience more immersive and enjoyable and, as a result, transforms corporate training from a dry and dull session to an enjoyable gaming arena.
Artificial intelligence:
Artificial intelligence can be used to create a personalized learning environment that is crucial in immersive learning. It can gauge an employee’s progress and offer them solutions based on their needs and level of understanding.
Additionally, AI can dynamically adapt the learning path based on real-time feedback, ensuring that the content remains relevant and engaging. The ability to analyze vast amounts of data allows AI to customize learning experiences. This fosters a more effective and personalized approach for each employee.
Conclusion
Immersive learning has reshaped the corporate training environment. Earlier perceived as “high-tech,” AR and VR are very much a part of our lives today. These technologies make learning more enjoyable and help learners understand difficult concepts with ease. Moreover, they also contribute greatly to skill acquisition in areas that require direct interaction with clients. So, if you are not incorporating immersive learning in your corporate training, you are missing out on a lot of opportunities. Therefore, leveraging this fantastic technology and witnessing how it transforms your organization is crucial.
