Abstract
Due to the rapid changes in the labor market, people need to constantly reshape their competencies, resulting in a tremendous need to reskill the workforce. Vocational training has traditionally been the task of educational institutions; however, today some companies also perform their own training. Overall success in establishing an individual's career depends on successful entry into the workforce, and in case of immigrants, entering the workforce is even more demanding. The key question is how educational institutions and companies can cooperate in this area. Immersive environments like virtual reality offer one type of solution. They are increasingly being used in workforce training and changing landscapes in educational institutions and companies. Using case examples, this chapter illustrates how several companies have jointly developed vocational materials with educational institutions and immigrants. The experiences are discussed, and examples of virtual reality training tasks implemented and connecting them to relevant competencies are presented.
TopBackground
VR is increasingly being used in delivering learning and training material. VR has been particularly relevant in fields such as medicine, engineering, aviation, and safety training with suggested benefits of interaction, immersion, deep concentration, and real-life experiences (Dalgarno et al., 2002; Kulik et al., 2017; Melo et al., 2019; Wallach et al., 2011). Training situations can be either individual or collaborative, and participants learn by actively participating in the learning situation. The learning situation is an immersive experience without external distractions, and it can enhance interpersonal communication. VR also supports different types of learning styles.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Stakeholder: A person or organization with an interest to an issue or entity and ability to affect it.
Learning Objective: Statement that define an expected goal of a study unit.
Ecosystem: Distributed and adaptive system that has ability to self-organize, scale and be sustainable.
Virtual Reality: The use of modeling and simulation to enable interaction in an artificial sensory environment.
Competence: The ability to do something.
Learning Taxonomy: A way of describing different aspects and levels of learning something.
Living Lab: A user centered innovation system.