After the success of our previous Instructional Design Innovation Workshop, we recently held another Training Workshop to show attendees the benefits of using immersive 3D worlds to train and induct personnel. We had a great turnout of people, from training, safety, HR and management backgrounds. This workshop was again organised and facilitated by Joanne Turbett of UpArrow Consulting, who did a fantastic job in engaging the audience and getting them to think outside of the box.
The day started off with an icebreaker where attendees had to pick a postcard that reminded them of something and explain why, resulting in some humorous and interesting answers. After this, attendees shared their experiences on how inductions and training are currently delivered in their workplaces. We used the MVX Induction Demo as an example throughout the workshop, first demonstrating how key learning outcomes were identified and used as a focus during the instructional design process. The MVX Induction Demo was then played through, and attendees had the opportunity to map the content in the demo back to the original learning outcomes.
After this, Joanne reviewed the different factors which make 3D virtual worlds engaging, and how they promote retention of information. Keeping this in mind, we then gave attendees information on the topic of fire extinguishers, and asked them to identify the key learning outcomes that are associated with the extinguishers and their use. Following this, the attendees got into small groups to storyboard possible ways of visualising and teaching these learning outcomes in an interactive 3D game. There were many creative ideas suggested, ranging from mini-games to match extinguishers to the correct types of fires they could be used on, animated cutscenes and scenarios, and different ways of teaching users to identify the types of fires.
The workshop finished off with lunch and discussions on ideas generated throughout the day, whilst a few tried out our other training demos. There was a lot of positive energy and enthusiasm as to what could be accomplished with immersive 3D training, and people who had never been exposed to this type of medium left with a lot of new ideas.
