Desktop Virtual Reality Applications for Training Personnel of Small Businesses

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in most world economies suffer from a series of intense economic pressures from local, regional and international markets. Although these problems are microeconomic to the small and medium-sized business, they are directly related to macro economic factors, particularly in the case of labor. One of the main pressures small and medium-sized businesses suffer from is the lack of worker technical skills. Past research has consistently shown that virtual reality (VR) can be effective for supporting competency-based training skills. The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview on how virtual reality can be used to support technical training in SMBs, including the use of Second Life and DIVE VR platforms. This chapter describes a desktop VR Application for training car mechanics from a small business and highlights advantages and challenges of desktop virtual reality for technical training. Finally, future trends related to the use of VR in training are discussed.

Developing Digital Literacies in Second Life

The proliferation of virtual environments and their use in business and industry begs the question of where in higher education and corporate training various literacies associated with these digital environments, such as using the technology and critically examining its affordances and constraints in applications, can occur. The author argues that such literacy training can occur in business writing courses as well as in corporate training environments that engage students and trainees in situated learning experiences. This chapter describes an instructional approach that integrates Second Life in a business writing course, which could also be applied in corporate training; and it reports on survey research related to student perceptions of their learning experience with that pedagogy. The discussion also includes how the instruction can be implemented in a corporate training environment to give employees experience using and critiquing business applications in Second Life. Generally, students perceive that Second Life is appropriate to include in business writing pedagogy because it is relevant to their career development as more companies use it in their operations. Implications of this study include identifying activities to help train students with virtual environments that they may experience in workplaces after graduation and offering activities that can be used by corporate trainers to help those already in workplaces develop these situated digital literacies.

Virtual Environments and Serious Games

The Alelo language and culture game-based training has been successfully applied in the K-16 education, government, and military sectors. With increasing globalization of business and widespread use of the Internet, this same approach is applicable for corporate education. The chapter will suggest how virtual environments using cross-cultural simulations that include communicating with virtual avatars could be adopted for corporate use to effectively train and educate employees in cross-cultural communication, as well as other skill sets.

Digital Connections and Learning Styles

Online or e-learning is increasingly becoming an integral part of education and training programs both in the academic world and in industry. This chapter includes a study which examines the ways in which faculty and students in an online Ph.D. program plan, adapt, and correlate coursework, teaching, study habits, and networking practices to accommodate all types of learning styles and to ensure that students feel part of a community of learners. The findings indicate that distance education should incorporate both synchronous and asynchronous instruction, personal and individual contact, a proper balance between the specific demands of the material to be covered and the learning styles of the students, and a willingness to adjust and modify delivery methods in order to obtain course or training objectives.

Blueprint for a Mashup

In 2005 the Centre for Professional Learning and Development at the Open University (OU) established a pioneering collaboration with Reuters (which in 2008 became Thomson Reuters), working together on The Management Challenge Online (TMCO), a 10-week cohort-based course for First Line Managers. The course is currently delivered in the open source Moodle environment using Flash learning modules, to a model that encourages and supports collaborative participation and deep learning for delegates. This chapter will begin with an introduction to TMCO, providing some context and background to its development, structure and delegate groups. This has been described in detail elsewhere, see Peachey & Walshe (2008), where it was identified that “a Second Life activity programme element for TMCO would offer additional engagement potential for a significant number of participants.” The chapter will describe the virtual world Second Life and the course management integration system Sloodle before exploring the motivation and structure for integrating these new tools into the next evolution of TMCO. The chapter will propose an adaptation of an evaluation framework originally proposed by de Freitas & Oliver (2006), creating a tool for evaluating the introduction of virtual world technology into a work based training curriculum, and will outline the proposed Second Life/Moodle/Sloodle activity for TMCO in some detail.

Intelligent Agents in Education

Distance learning through information and communication technologies has consistently had a notable impact and influence on the academic and professional world. This is greatly due to the fact that distance learning allows users, especially professionals, to learn at their own pace, according to their availability, in addition to having limited costs. These features are consistent with and support the concept of life long learning. Traditional courses delivered in an E-learning modality can sometimes, however, result in being unstimulating and leaving the student with the impression of being isolated during their learning process. Pedagogical intelligent agents, however, are able to be constantly present in the learner’s training environment, interacting verbally and non verbally (gestures and expressions) with users, thus making E-learning much more interactive, interesting and fun. This ongoing interaction and support of the agent, therefore, notably helps reduce the possibility of users feeling excluded during their E-learning course, thus better enhancing their overall learning experience and reinforcing their motivation. This chapter will introduce features and potential of pedagogical agents and will illustrate, with examples, the most common techniques used to design an agent or a “society” of intelligent agents and how to integrate them into a learning environment.

The New Company Water Cooler

Employees gathered around the water cooler – the image is now a corporate cliché. This type of informal networking allows members of an organization to build – or break – personal and professional relationships in ways not possible in more formal settings or business situations. As companies become larger and more geographically dispersed, these types of opportunities and relationships are increasingly more difficult to create and maintain. Organizations must investigate new means of communications and technology. Three-dimensional (3D) immersive worlds offer a range of possibilities for accomplishing this goal. In this chapter, the authors will highlight their eight year experience using 3D virtual immersive worlds in graduate programs at Appalachian State University. Their experience based on feedback, observation, and survey results suggests that 3D virtual worlds developed for education support deep learning and can help learners make meaning and feel part of a learning community. The chapter will consider ways in which corporate organizations can draw upon the experience of higher education in the design, creation and utilization of virtual worlds to create opportunity for both purposeful and serendipitous interaction.

Facilitating a Hierarchy of Engagement

Virtual worlds, where many people can interact simultaneously within the same three-dimensional environment, are productive enabling environments for corporate education. In this chapter, the authors propose a hierarchy of four types of educational engagement, at successively deeper levels of interaction. The authors then show that virtual worlds can be useful platforms for distance corporate education because they can be used to promote engagement at all four levels of the proposed hierarchy. By linking their hierarchy with existing learning theories, they argue that the effectiveness of corporate education can be successfully carried out by using virtual worlds. They also provide an overview of the historical development of virtual worlds, the development of distance education, and a description of technological, institutional, and research challenges needed to be met for distance corporate education to realize its potential.

Train the Trainer

This chapter describes an online competency-based model for teaching adult learners in virtual environments. This model, informed by prior studies for online teaching, expands emergent themes within best practices and identifies competencies for course design, delivery and management of adult-centered online learning environments. The use of part-time instructors, in academic and corporate settings, to facilitate learning in virtual environments requires formal processes to develop web-based teaching skills that meet the needs and expectations of a multigenerational mix of online adult-learners. The competency-based model uses a generative approach to developing instructors as adult learners and builds on adult and constructivist learning theories. The model provides opportunities to improve web-based teaching skills and encourage behaviors that influence student engagement, retention and learning. This chapter guides the reader through a step-by-step process of understanding competencies needed to facilitate virtual learning with suggestions for implementation and practice in corporate settings.

Applied Training in Virtual Environments

Virtual worlds hold enormous promise for corporate education and training. From distributed collaboration that facilitates participation at a distance, to allowing trainees to experience dangerous situations first-hand without threat to personal safety, virtual worlds are a solution that offers benefits for a multitude of applications. While related to videogames, virtual worlds have different parameters of interaction that make them useful for specific location or open-ended instructional exchanges. Research suggests that participants identify quickly with roles and situations they encounter in virtual environments, that they experience virtual interactions as real events, and that those experiences carry over into real life. This paper will evaluate the attributes of a successful applied training project, the Canadian border simulation at Loyalist College, conducted in the virtual world Second Life. This simulated border crossing is used to teach port of entry interview skills to students at the college, whose test scores, engagement level, and motivation have increased substantially by utilizing this training environment. The positive results of this training experience led the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) to pilot the border environment for agency recruits, with comparable results. By analyzing the various elements of this simulation, and examining the process with which it was used in the classroom, a set of best practices emerge that have wide applicability to corporate training.