Kobayshi Maru

Like my college Megan, I was intrigued by the concept of self-efficacy and success - both success in or on the job and success in a career. Anyone who has talked to me for even 5 minutes will know that I can't go even that long without discussing what my organization is trying to do with VR. Well, I think VR provides a great opportunity to increase a learner's self-efficacy and feeling of accomplishment, far more than our typical “power point” style training delivery. 

We have three types of training, CBT (computer-based training), instructor-led or seminar-type training, and hands-on training where the learners get to work with the equipment and on simulators to help them understand their equipment. 

Naturally, everyone believes in and sees the value of hands-on, but there are reasons it’s more useful, classes are generally smaller and have a more beneficial instructor to student ratio for learning, theory can be integrated into the hands-on instruction and reinforced, the learners get to work with their hands and practice procedures. The challenge is that it is more expensive and not as scalable. On the other end of the spectrum is CBT, which is imminently scalable and cheaper, just less effective at promoting sustainable knowledge transfer to the field. 

Our VR classes bridge this gap nicely. They take theory and elements of hands-on and provide it to the learner in a scalable manner that allows them the opportunity to practice safely on simulators that replicate a field environment. In some ways, I think that VR might be more beneficial than traditional hands-on for the reason that we can provide opportunities for the learner to practice emergency-type procedures without endangering themselves or others. Recently we released a VR course that simulates an excavation cave-in and asks the learner to initiate an emergency procedure. A cave-in of a trench is something that a typical, real-work, hands-on excavation training would never be able to simulate. 

What does this have to do with self-efficacy? By giving the learner opportunities to practice these situations in the VR world, our hope is that when or if those situations occur in the field they are better able to handle and react to them. Additionally, if the emergency never occurs in the field, by having practiced for the situation in the VR world, the learner is more apt to feel confident in his abilities. This can have benefits to the learner’s on-the-job performance, confidence in his abilities, and career. There is a myriad of ways I see VR can help with self-efficacy for adult learners. 

To bring this back to Megan's thoughts on choreography, dance, and self-efficacy, she mentions failure. In the cases I list above I see that failure acts not as a demotivational moment but rather as a chance to learn, understand and grow from the failure. We have one course where the learner cannot succeed. Failure is baked in. They must react to the failure. For any Star Trek fans out there it is similar to the Kobayashi Maru training, where no matter what choice you make, the end result is a failure. Sort of like the ill-structured problems we have been working on within self-authorship. There may not be true black and white solutions to grey problems, just the least bad options. But from this, our learners get to learn about the experience, and hopefully grow and understand their capabilities better.