What is immersive training?
Immersive training is a learning method that uses technologies such as virtual reality (VR) to create interactive, immersive experiences that simulate real-life situations, allowing employees to learn in a safe and practical way. They can explore and interact with realistic scenarios, giving them the opportunity to practice operational skills and soft skills before they are used in real work environments. And they can re-live these experiences as often as necessary.
Not only that, they provide immediate feedback on performance, making them more efficient learners.
By incorporating learning principles into immersive interfaces, benefits such as improved job performance, increased employee confidence, long-term knowledge retention and more effective training are observed.
Applications of virtual reality in employee training
Immersive training, a fast-growing method of learning, is being applied in various fields, among which we will explore the most important ones.
Professional learning: trainings and simulations
Virtual reality applied to professional training represents a revolution in job preparation by offering virtual environments that simulate the real world. This immersive technology is transforming sectors such as energy, transport, manufacturing and infrastructure, among many others, and is having a particularly significant impact on the airline industry.
More and more companies are adopting VR to optimize employee training. In the retail sector, for example, it is being used to prepare staff to handle high-pressure situations, such as intense promotional days or large commercial events, helping them to make quick and effective decisions.
In the tourism and hospitality industry, it is used to train employees to manage critical scenarios, such as dealing with disappointed travelers, conflict resolution and evacuation procedures in hotels or airports.
The airline industry, in particular, faces unique challenges. Physical simulations are often expensive and complex, recruitment and training involve high costs, and high employee rotation requires resource-intensive onboarding processes. In addition, airlines operate in a highly regulated environment with constantly evolving regulations, demanding flexible and effective learning solutions.
VR allows the creation of interactive scenarios adapted to each employee profile, where they can practice critical procedures or develop skills in controlled environments. For example, maintenance staff can practice turbine repair, while cabin crew can train in on-board emergency management.
Immersive learning in this sector offers significant benefits: reducing airlines' operational costs, optimizing training times and improving knowledge retention rates. It also positions companies as leaders in adopting innovative technologies to address current and future challenges.
To better understand how to apply virtual reality to these trainings, we will explore some of the most common examples for airline employees where VR could complement traditional training.
Cabin crew training
- Emergency evacuation simulations after an emergency landing
- Management of challenging passengers triggering a stressful situation
- Care during a period of turbulence
- Door opening training
- Simulations of fire in the cabin, lavatory, gallery, or a bomb threat
Maintenance personal training
- Pre- and post-flight inspection simulations
- Training in technical overhaul procedures under different weather conditions
- Disassembly, repair and replacement of critical parts
- Preventive maintenance and failure response simulations
Ground handling training
- Baggage and cargo handling simulations to ensure balance and identification of dangerous objects
- Runway emergency response training
- Simulations of aircraft guidance during taxiing on congested runways
Pilot training
- Simulations of technical failures: loss of engine, failure of hydraulic systems...
- Practice of forced landings
- Immersive simulations to practice decision-making in complex scenarios.
Professional training: soft skills
Soft skills are at the core of adaptability and collaboration, and immersive learning is revolutionizing their development, helping companies build more effective and complete teams.
Organizations are using virtual reality to train their staff in a variety of skills. Educational immersion allows employees to learn by doing, which improves knowledge retention and skills transfer to the workplace.
For example, in the airline industry, VR allows them to simulate interactions with difficult passengers, help staff practice empathetic responses with nervous passengers during turbulence or improve effective communication in emergency situations. They also recreate scenarios that challenge participants to make critical decisions, delegate tasks and motivate teams, as well as trainings that allow employees to experience different perspectives based on diversity and inclusion.
Once soft skills have been strengthened, companies can begin to see benefits such as significant productivity gains and improved customer satisfaction.
All of this in a scalable and cost-effective way, making VR a particularly valuable tool for companies where team collaboration and customer engagement are essential.
Virtual reality, beyond the work environment
Virtual reality is not only transforming professional training, also is gaining ground in the early stages of education, including universities and technical schools. This technology allows students to explore complex concepts in a practical and interactive way, offering immersive environments that enrich the learning experience. For example, in medical schools, students can perform simulations of complicated surgeries without real-life risks, significantly enhancing their practical preparation. In engineering, they can design and test virtual structures, visualizing in real time how they would respond to various physical conditions.
VR fosters essential early skills such as collaboration and critical thinking by allowing multiple students to work together in a virtual space regardless of their physical location. These advances prepare students for the challenges they will face in different industries in the future.
Immersive reality is beginning a new era in education, positioning itself as a powerful tool that bridges the early stages of learning with the demands of the world of work, strengthening the bridge between theory and practice.
Taking a virtual experience to another level - Gamification and AI
There are a variety of ways to make immersive experiences more fun, interesting and highly engaging for users, such as moving from storytelling to storyliving. However, there are two components that are widely used today that can quickly take any immersive experience to the next level.
Gamification
Gamification is a very popular and effective method that many companies apply to immersive employee experiences. It involves transforming a simple, linear experience into a fun and motivating challenge, where employees can learn key skills while participating in games and challenges. This combination of immersive technology and gamification not only accelerates the learning curve for employees, but also increases employee engagement, knowledge retention and job satisfaction.
A practical example would be the inspection of the aircraft through virtual reality whose dynamics would reward the employee with points for identifying problems quickly and efficiently and making safe decisions.
These points would be awarded for completing tasks correctly and the employee would be included in a ranking that encourages empathetic competition between teams. After climbing the ranks, the user would be able to unlock more advanced scenarios (leveling up) and new achievements by passing them.
Thanks to this experience, the team is prepared for any situation while maintaining motivation in their work.
The application of AI in immersive learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we have known almost everything up until now, most notably the way we learn, by offering new, more engaging and personalized experiences for users.
When integrated with virtual reality, AI enables the creation of immersive environments tailored entirely to the employee to enhance knowledge retention and practical skills development, something that was significantly more costly with conventional training methods.
This is why AI plays a key role in enhancing virtual reality experiences. It enables natural language conversation and support in the experience. This ability to adapt and analyze deeply is radically transforming the way we learn, providing a more effective education focused on the individual needs of each learner. In the future, it is expected to personalize the learning experience in real time, detect the most difficult areas of learning, identify patterns and trends and anticipate the future needs of learners. In addition, technological advances and integration with other technologies are expected to enable even more realistic, accessible and hyper- personalized experiences.
Landing this concept in a practical case, a cabin crew member could conduct training in a virtual aircraft that, in mid-flight, enters turbulence and a passenger begins to show signs of nervousness and fear. Thanks to AI, human behavior can be simulated by algorithms and evaluation of language, tone and posture can be carried out, providing immediate feedback. The flight attendant can practice what would be the best calming strategies and what responses she would get from the passenger.
This simulation would allow complex situations to be rehearsed without real consequences, also adapting the level of difficulty applied by the AI and offering real-time lessons to improve the response.
Immersive training is changing the way we learn and develop. More and more companies from different sectors are implementing VR-based learning in their daily processes because of positive ROI, lower cost compared to traditional methods or risk reduction, among other factors. As we continue to explore the possibilities of this exciting technology, it is very clear that the future of learning is and will be highly immersive.
Sources:
Pearson: higher educationndo, Talespin, LinkedIn, Weforum, PwC, Precedenceresearch