Abstract:

The competencies needed at workplaces are changing at an accelerating pace. Meanwhile, virtual reality (VR) is an interesting emerging technology for teaching, learning and workplace training. This innovation has elicited research interest in different domains. VR has also been used to develop competence recognition models. Despite the abundance of studies on this technology, however, most research has focused on the viewpoint of education, and fewer explorations have been devoted to the process by which collaborating higher education and companies design, develop and create VR-based training materials. Co-operation between these institutions is important because it is predicted that in the future, workplace training will play a greater role in learning needed competencies than that played by university degrees.

In this paper, we discuss how we can understand VR’s potential as a tool for workplace training and how companies and higher education can collaboratively develop and produce training materials that are underlain by VR technology. Our objective was to create models by which such co-operation can be practised. We used examples from two industries health care and hospitality.

VR’s benefits are interaction, immersion, and the possibility of enabling deep concentration. (Dalgarno et al., 2002; Kulik et al., 2017; Melo et al., 2019; Ota et al., 1995; Parisi, 2015; Wallach et al., 2012; Zheng et al., 2018). VR has been used to create competence recognition models aimed at helping immigrants exhibit their competencies and skills (Kauppinen & Drake, 2020). However, the full potential of this technology has not been thoroughly researched and discovered. In particular, more detailed investigations should be directed towards co-operation between companies and end-users in the development of VR-based training content.

To achieve our objective to create our content development model, we used a user-centric living lab and developed the model in an ecosystem comprising companies, immigrant associations, two higher education organisations, and immigrants. The aim of living labs is for users to innovate, create new services and products, fabricate prototypes and test creations in co-operation with end-users. First, we conducted a workshop with companies about content and learning objectives. Second, we created a three-step content model for the hospitality industry and a four-step equivalent for the health care industry. The models are based on the taxonomies of Bloom and Marzano (Lorin & Krathwohl, 2001; Marzano & Kendall, 2007). Subsequently, we created the VR training content for each step using the Unity game engine and 360 videos. The content was created in both Finnish and English. We tested the content with immigrant associations and immigrants and the content assessment was carried out in a joint workshop with the companies.

The company representative realised the potential of VR as a tool for creating company-training materials. They were impressed with the intensity and immersion provided by the training material.They also provided some future development suggestions. From the perspective of these companies, the VR technology can be used in the orientation of new workers and the recapitulation of learned competencies. Our next step is to develop the content development model to include, alongside virtual reality technology, the possibilities of augmented reality in human resources training and in new workers orientation.

Keywords:

Virtual reality, training material, higher education, companies.