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Top 3 Immersive Learning Formats to Make Your Corporate Training Fun

Corporate industry has started to adapt to modernized learning and development strategies to make their training successful. There are numerous learning formats and strategies available for the corporate industries, one of them being immersive learning. To enhance employee engagement and make the training fun and exciting for them, immersive learning has a lot of creative formats at its disposal. Immersive learning helps a learner experience a real environment in a hypothetical space. This blog will help you understand various immersive learning formats and how can each of them can impact the engagement of employees.

Theory of Immersive Learning & Its Benefits

It is obvious by now, the current and the upcoming generation are highly influenced by technology and innovations, and the corporate workforce is no different. Employees find it hard to take part in their training sessions if they are not interesting and engaging, and that’s where immersive learning makes its way. Immersive learning leverages the power of technology, innovations, and the latest smart devices to deliver exciting corporate training sessions. Immersive learning makes the employees utilize their maximum thinking capacity to grasp the full potential knowledge relayed by these sessions, which makes up for the concept of individualism realization for skill development.

Immersive learning provides artificial, digitally developed content in a specific environment that can replicate the real work environment and scenarios in the best possible way. Learners involved in the training sessions get to actively participate in these virtual scenarios and their actions can influence the outcome of the training sessions.

Access this free webinar recording to explore more about such work-based scenarios.

Immersive learning is usually preferred by learners who have a special attraction to visually creative and impactful content, i.e most of the employees who belong to the modern generation also called the GenZ. Immersive learning is also effective because it helps the learners to hone their skills and gain knowledge in a risk-free space where they can perform a single task multiple times, making a good example for the popular quote “practice makes you perfect”.

Top 3 Immersive Learning Formats

1. Augmented Reality

When you mix the real world with digital content to create a specific environment, it’s called augmented reality. In simple words, you stay where you are, but certain computerized assets can be added to your surroundings and you will be able to digitally interact with them in real time. These assets can either be 3d or 2d depending on the requirements and the nature of the asset you are trying to embed. The best example can be Snapchat filters like you are just facing your camera, but certain virtual assets can be triggered either by your actions or just by your existence.

Augmented reality can help with training sessions such as safety training or machinery training. The audio-visual interactivity helps the learners to properly gain an immersive learning experience and retain most of the knowledge they gain. For example, consider a bunch of employees in the non-IT department can be provided with an AR program where they can operate certain programs, make mistakes, and learn from it, so when they get to use the actual device, they can confidently proceed further with the task and not commit fatal errors.

2. Virtual Reality

Unlike augmented reality, everything whether real or hypothetical, goes virtual here. Learners are provided with a VR headset to get immersed in the virtual world of simulations that replicate real-world scenarios. VR can be programmed to enable first-hand interactions with almost everything in the virtual environment, making it highly engaging and exciting to discover new possibilities. Virtual reality has use cases similar to AR, but unique uses exist as well. To provide a better VR experience, it is often merged with AR to provide the maximum benefits to the learner and motivate them to do better. Authoring tools like CenarioVR makes the development of VR-based eLearning courses easier and more creative.

3. Scenarios and Simulations

Getting back to basics, before AR and VR digitalized the concept of immersive learning, their core was established by the concept of learning through scenarios and simulations. Scenario-based learning, as the name suggests, makes the user understand different concepts and develop their skills with the help of work-related scenarios. These scenarios can either be vocally explained or visually, depending on the type of training. Learners are given a real-life scenario where their actions determine the result of the course and thereby develop their critical thinking and decision-making skills. This helps organizations to understand their employees in a more personalized manner and design their courses accordingly. Ex. sales training, customer support, and leadership training.

Simulations, on the other hand, have a more practical approach to immersive learning. Learners are provided a sandbox environment where they can execute real-world tasks and practices, and learn from their mistakes risk-free until they are ready for the real task. Simulations are developed mostly for the manufacturing industries that use heavy machinery and multiple technologies so that their real equipment doesn’t get damaged while learners are getting trained for their usage. But, since learning has become more innovative, simulations are getting used for other departments as well. Ex. product training, skill training, and software training.

Wrapping Up!

Immersive learning strategies are gaining popularity due to the flexibility it offers with the help of digitalization. Multiple strategies can be mixed and matched to deliver a personalized learning experience to the learners. When we talk about mixing and matching different strategies, blended learning is probably the first thing that pops up for discussion. Grab this eBook to understand why blended learning is an effective approach to boosting employee engagement and performance.

Blended Learning: A Guide to Boost Employee Performance