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Coaching, Other, Soft Skills, VR-Related

Foretell Reality for Special Education and Soft Skills Development

In their recent article, Questar III Boces explains how they found success using Foretell Reality in their classrooms for special education. Questar III is a Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) and educates approximately 1,600 students in various programs including career and technical education (CTE)New Visionspre-K, and special education. Questar III also provides affordable management and administrative services ranging from grant writing to financial planning.

Student Satisfaction

Foretell Reality partnered with Questar III to create training sessions for key soft skills like employer expectations, customer service, and mock interviews for students from three different education centers. 84% of students using Foretell indicated that the VR experience was “easier than in person”, and 14% specified that it was easier thanks to the increased focus on a survey.

The Work Readiness and Transition Perspective

“There are some real benefits to using virtual reality with our students … Not only do we see increased engagement and focused attention from our students, but it also provides them with more knowledge retention and boosted creativity,” says Jon Levine, Work Readiness and Transition Coordinator for Questar III BOCES Special Education.

Levine says that VR classes relieved anxiety for their students because they gave them an opportunity to practice soft skills that they were not exposed to. Indeed, 72% of the students indicate that the use of virtual reality highly benefits their education, and gave the highest score for wanting to see more VR and Foretell Reality applications in future lessons.

Teacher Reviews

“I think VR offers engaging additional practice and create a realistic environment that can help future employees be more prepared for the process.” says a teacher using Foretell Reality as part of the program. “Most of our students are very engaged with the technical world and very much enjoyed their experience,” they add. All teachers interviewed agree on the benefits of engagement and realism provided by VR simulations in classrooms and express positive sentiments about its potential.

Coaching, Collaboration, VR-Related

Industries Using VR for Employee Training

Learning in VR

The ability to embody a role in learning experiences has proven to speed learning. Virtual Reality (VR) technology allows for completely immersive and engaging training experiences where learners are not just observers or note-takers, but become active participants in their training. At the same time, VR has a unique ability to surround the learner with content, guidance, and feedback that offers a different way of learning than any other technology or toolkit (Adept XR).

Training Solutions

Training is shown to be one of the factors that influence new employee happiness and retention (Lauhman, 2020). In fact, organizations with a strong onboarding and training process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70% (Gayatri, 2020). In contrast to in-person and online training, new employee training in VR can be done at any given time or location, without any external distractions. With remote jobs rising in number, VR is in a unique position to help thousands of employers and employees worldwide.

In manufacturing companies, employees who received training in VR or AR produced 30% more goods that met quality standards, made nearly 40% fewer errors than traditionally trained employees, and completed tasks 3.25x faster than traditionally trained employees. (Zawadski, 2020). Plus, by investing in VR headsets for employee onboarding, technology services company Accenture reduced their onboarding costs by an estimated 96.4%. This goes to show that VR can revolutionize not only training programs and their satisfaction but also the future performance of a company.

Just a few other commercial companies that use VR training for their employees are Goodway, Walmart, Porsche, KFC, Lufthansa, and H&R Block. The returns that they are seeing are incredible: After implementing VR training to improve the customer experience, H&R Block employees reported learning essential skills to manage difficult conversations. As a result, the company saw a 50% decrease in dissatisfied customers, a 9.9% decrease in customer handling times, and significantly faster issue resolution times among the representatives who completed the program.

The best part is that VR training can be adapted to any company and need. Without the need for extra personnel, gathering everyone together in a physical space, or programming activities for each new cohort, VR training solutions create a fun and effective learning experience that can be tailored to any company and training. The sky is the limit in terms of physics, equipment, and environments that can be featured in an experience. Not only do you feel like you are meeting new people, but thanks to the practice you get, your confidence increases as well.

Summary

VR provides a fun and immersive way to start learning a new skill, a new job, or even an entirely new career. It has shown benefits across manufacturing, service, and healthcare companies, as well as the military. By taking away the pressure of failure, VR training eases the learning curve. Plus, it drastically reduces the time, effort, and capital required from companies, and increases employee satisfaction.

Foretell Reality

Foretell Reality offers customized training solutions for educational institutions, enterprises, and hospitals. The Foretell platform supports as many as 25 learners at once, so your teams can learn from each other, and get to know their coworkers. We provide detailed analytics and feedback based on body language and speech, as well as performance improvements over time. Please visit our website for more information or to schedule a demo.

virtual reality auditorium class
Collaboration, Industry News, Other, Soft Skills, VR-Related

A Guide to Education in VR

Introduction

Right after telelearning comes learning in virtual reality (VR). And before you say I have Zoom fatigue, we can assure you that this will be different. Rather than interacting with teachers and classmates through a screen, you will feel immersed and engaged in learning. You can have your next science class underwater and learn about the animals swimming around you– All while seeing and hearing your classmates through your headset. VR creates a sense of social presence that telelearning lacks, and a level of immersion that beat in-person classes.

Effectiveness

Experimental learning, simulations, and role-play all have a large place in VR. It is less about passive learning, like listening or reading, and more about active learning, like practice and discussion. With VR learning, your information recall and retention rates will be higher. The benefits of VR usage in classrooms also include raising students’ success and enabling collaboration across remote participants from different backgrounds. Finally, in areas like language learning, VR can help expose students to the language and culture repeatedly, increasing the depth and breadth of practice (VRScout).

Virtual reality promotes learning by doing. Researchers suggest that increased levels of immersive content stimulate multisensory engagement and can ultimately lead to more effective learning outcomes (Webster 2016). As an extension, an experiment conducted with over 1000 undergraduate STEM students found that VR education improved grades by a full letter grade (DeHart, 2018). The improvement is primarily related to increased engagement and motivation. In addition, VR was found to be more effective in improving knowledge compared to non-VR scenarios like simulations or traditional learning (Chen et al.). 

A review found VR education to be particularly effective in STEM, architecture, and medicine, as well as more fundamental skills and knowledge like learning how to organize thoughts (Hamilton et al., 2020). “A relatively small VR device can even act as a whole science lab.” writes Adobe. Think about reduced safety concerns, increased lab capacity, and an end to those nighttime lab sessions. Students are not limited in what they can create, and teachers are not required to have long hours of preparation. And for those who get queasy dissecting a frog, there are simplified simulations.

Accessibility

One way that VR helps level the playing field is by making field trips accessible to all. This is especially relevant for k12 students whose parents often have to pay extra for more engaging learning opportunities (Maristute, 2020). For example, students can travel to recreations of Ellis Island in the 19th century, meet the Egyptians who built the pyramids or go to the moon in a spaceship. Furthermore, many prominent museums and galleries have their exhibitions available in VR for students to explore and interact with at their own pace.

In addition, VR can recreate physically impossible scenarios for students to experience. For example, students can learn history surrounded by the remains of the Acropolis in Athens while conversing with animated gods and goddesses. As a result, VR is spreading among virtual campuses like Edstutia, as well as in brick-and-mortar universities like Harvard University, Nova Southeastern University, and Fordham University.  Some institutions, like Harvard University, have also started giving certifications in VR education to teachers.

Implementation

Just like remote work and therapy have not gone anywhere after the pandemic, remote learning is here to stay, taking education to the next level. In fact, a study published in 2018 that VR technologies are now mature enough to be integrated into education as much as any other computing technology (Elmqaddem, 2018). At Foretell Reality, we provide widespread education solutions, from virtual campuses to small discussion rooms and classrooms just like in a traditional school or university. On top of that, our users can customize their avatars, play games, collaborate on whiteboards, and explore 3D objects with their virtual bodies.

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