I work for a non-profit, adult learning organization that focuses on training contractors who work in and support the energy industry. HASC has been providing training of this type, to improve safety and craft skills among the contractor community for over 30 years. Over that time the training standards and the expectations of the learners have become staid, stale, and less effective in terms of stimulating learner engagement and recall. Our goal lately is to find new ways to provide training to the learners in a manner that makes it more engaging, and interesting and will resonate with the learners in such a way that the theories and capabilities that they learn will be used and applied to their worksites and in their fieldwork.
HASC has been working with many technologies to try and improve learner retention and the learner's opportunity to apply their knowledge outside of the learning site. Among these are: (a) virtual reality (VR) exercises that are appended to the traditional computer-based training (CBT) delivery, (b) microlearning modules and chatbots that are delivered directly to the learner through their smartphones, (c) changes to our typical CBT design capabilities to include more animations, videos, interactive slides, and (d) a live online proctoring system to allow learners to take courses at their own time and allow their organization to have the confidence of the integrity of our ID checking and proctoring system that they have in our training site.
Many of these technologies are perceived as positive by the companies that are HASC's members. The opportunity to provide the same training to their employees wherever they might be and at any time without sacrificing the peace of mind that they will pay attention and not cheat by being proctored has been in high demand for years. VR technologies are also seen by contracting companies as a potential advantage to the typical CBT training. Several contracting agencies and refinery owners have expressed interest in having HASC develop custom VR experiences for their organizations. Microlearning is seen as an interesting and novel idea but has not been embraced by any contracting companies.
The learners however are not embracing the technology as avidly as their contracting organizations. For the most part, our learners do not embrace technological innovation and even those that are designed to work seamlessly with their work and home life are not utilized to even a minor extent. Typically our learners do not want to utilize their personal smartphones, phone numbers, or email addresses for business needs as there is no compensation for their time or effort or for utilizing their equipment. VR exercises, with the mixture of using audio and VR headsets, are tough for them to manage and the joysticks used in the immersive learning environment, and VR storylines are tough for them to understand and negotiate without help.
Spaced practice and microlearning, although not as avidly anticipated, HASC believes has the best opportunity to transform our learning organization and the application of learning in the field by the learners. Transfer of learning takes place when what is taught is used and applied in the field. So often it seems as though our learners leave what they learned at the exit doors. Training takes place at HASC, work is done on the worksite. We are eager to find ways to keep training continuously. As Deloitte (2018) states; executives are focusing not so much on the transformation of current educational institutions but on disruption in the approach to learning - that is, it is no longer about formal education, but about an ongoing process of continually acquiring new skills and knowledge" (p. 13). Our live online proctoring system which allows learners to take courses outside of our brick and mortar building is a sea-change in not only the way that HASC has historically done business but for the entire safety council industry. As Schwab (2016) states, the fourth industrial revolution is "forcing companies to re-examine the way they do business" (p. 5). The challenge for HASC is that our primary differentiator from other training organizations is the integrity of the process. Our developers pressed the boundaries of our technological capabilities to model the live online proctoring system on the established, accepted, process that we've fostered for so many years.
All this being said, HASC has seen that our learners are coming to expect more opportunities for technology to be used as a natural part of their training environments. Digital natives, those who are more adept at working in digital arenas, come to our council and expect more than the standard CBT offering. They demand a higher standard and quality of their learning design and expect more in terms of using technological innovations. We are early adopters of many of these innovations compared to our competitors and it will be interesting to see if the learner's embracing of this technology catches up with their organization's eagerness to see it adopted.
References
Deloitte. (2018). The fourth industrial revolution is here; Are you ready? New York: Deloitte
Schwab, K. (2016). The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What it means and how to respond. World Economic Forum. Retrieved May 4, 2022, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/
No comments:
Post a Comment