Meet the Facilitate CXO - Philipp Seiler

VR is a powerful tool for learning, we are able to create experiences which are very close to real life, but at the same time still have the ability to control the pace, intensity and outcomes of these experiences.?

Here are a few tips to help you create VR learning experiences that will be powerful and effective.?

1. Create a sense of agency; which is the feeling that the learner is the agent of their virtual actions and can manipulate the virtual world in a meaningful way. A key way to do this is to provide choices and show consequences of those choices. To do this:?

• Go beyond just interactive elements (hotspots etc) and create a story which the learner is drawn into. Make it relevant to them and provide realistic choices in the story.
• Provide meaningful consequences to these choices (not just ‘Sorry that’s the wrong answer’). What is meaningful will depend on the learning object, but use real world consequences as your guide and capture the consequences in a highly realistic format (e.g. 360 media).

2. Minimise sensory overwhelm: because VR experiences are very engaging, an unintended consequence can be that learners get overwhelmed (due to increased cognitive load) and lose track of the learning objective. To minimise this, apply the below 3 principles when creating experiences:

• Coherence: include only material directly relevant to learning objective
• Signalling: highlight the material which is most important to the learning objective
• Redundancy: do not present identical material in visual and audio form simultaneously

3. Socialise the concept well before implementation. Using VR for learning is a change for most people and a bit of preparation for this change is worthwhile. Some simple things to do here are:

• Communicate the rationale behind introducing this technology beforehand.
• Allow everyone to try the technology in a fun and interactive way, such as hosting a ‘lunch and learn’ session.

4. Identify champions of the technology and learning more broadly, who can support its implementation. These champions often don’t have formal leadership positions but can have a lot of influence with various groups of people. Try to bring these individuals into the implementation team early on.

5. Start simple and do it well. Pick a use case for which excellent content can be created and one that will resonate with learners. Approach it as a proof of concept and do it well. In this way it will be easier to learn from mistakes, get internal buy-in, and any subsequent scaling of the idea will be much easier. Resist the urge to go big or complex at the beginning.