During the COVID-19 pandemic, Accenture onboarded 150,000 employees in an entirely digital office. As the new academic semester begins, students at 10 colleges and universities — including Morehouse College, the University of Maryland Global Campuses and the University of Kansas School of Nursing — are using virtual reality headsets to step into digital twins of their campuses and to visit immersive digital representations of the Egyptian pyramids or the inside of a human heart. And this year alone, 100,000 K-12 students in the U.S. will tap into spatial and experiential learning to more deeply internalize math concepts through VR.
Immersive learning is rapidly demonstrating its power to transform learning and work at every level. VR and augmented reality — together known as extended reality technology — have enormous potential to deliver workplace and career training faster, more cost-effectively and more equitably at scale across a wider range of skills and occupations than ever before. Like a flight simulator for virtually any job, XR can democratize training by allowing learners to practice without limits, learn increasingly complex skills and receive training in high-risk environments all from the safety and convenience of a VR headset, laptop or tablet.
Companies and learning providers are not only using VR and AR to develop in-demand technical skills but foundational human skills like communication, teamwork and leadership. Immersive learning also allows learners and workers to envision new career pathways for themselves and then helps them develop the skills necessary to turn that vision into reality. But to ensure immersive learning lives up to its full promise as an equitable learning and development tool, we need to go a step further to empower workers and learners to help shape these virtual environments themselves.
That means ensuring this technology reaches everyone who could benefit from it, not just the privileged few who can afford to pay top dollar. The impact becomes even more profound when the voices, perspectives and lived experiences of people of all backgrounds are incorporated at every stage of the metaverse, from designing and developing the technology to helping implement it.
JFF is seeing this impact firsthand through Skill Immersion Lab, our partnership with software company SAP and immersive learning provider Talespin to offer professional skills training to high school-aged students across the country. Using Quest headsets, students practiced self-awareness and communication skills in a range of professional settings and roles. While the experience was powerful even in its “off-the-shelf” form, the students, many of them from underrepresented populations, told us that the virtual office setting in which the VR training took place didn’t fully reflect their everyday lives. So in the project’s second phase, we collaborated directly with students to co-design new learning modules, fine-tuning elements ranging from workplace settings to avatars’ workplace attire, dialogue and body language.
In the end, giving learners the chance to become co-creators of their own learning proved to be a powerful way to drive authentic engagement and immersion.
Similar themes are playing out in our partnership with Meta, which aims to demonstrate how AR/VR technologies can strengthen the competitiveness of small- and medium-sized businesses by upskilling workers — particularly those who have been disadvantaged in the labor market. Last year, we helped workers and supervisors in eight small advanced manufacturing companies implement an AR tool that converts paper-based checklists for processes like powering on or repairing machinery into rich, multimedia digital instructions that let workers visualize steps and more easily report progress or troubleshoot. Workers collaborated to create over 40 different ways to use the AR, from cross-training opportunities to quality control. One worker caught and fixed what could have been a costly production error; others used the platform to brainstorm and implement process improvements. All of the businesses agreed that the use of AR improved communication and collaboration across their companies.
The key takeaway: Get this technology into people’s hands and watch what they can do.
For those exploring bringing XR-based workforce training into your organization, make sure workers and learners have a seat at the planning table, allowing them to give feedback about the skill sets and scenarios that are most relevant to them. Instructors: supplement the limitless personalized practice the metaverse offers with opportunities for learners to compare notes, process their experiences with one another, reflect on their learnings in the real world, and dig into how differences in lived experiences might translate into different experiences in the metaverse.
XR solution developers: Be deliberate about ensuring your own workforce reflects the rich diversity of your communities and your audience. Enlist end users of all backgrounds — especially young people and those from populations underrepresented in the tech workforce — to contribute to product design and testing. Investors: Fund metaverse creators and entrepreneurs who may not fit your image of what an innovator looks like.
Learning in the metaverse is and should be for all of us. Let’s build it that way.
