Artificial intelligence-backed, AR-based solutions are being sought by enterprise to close gaps in performance. These efforts require careful strategic planning, adept understanding of the business problems at hand, and expert level technical execution. It's not enough to say, "AR is great and we need to do something with it." We must use sound technology assessment and keen business acumen to determine when, where, and how to create groundbreaking, process-changing tools for the workforce.

Augmented reality continues to advance and emerge in both consumer and enterprise markets. There’s also  rising interest in how to use AR for learning and performance. With AR now one of the hottest buzzwords, how much is hype and how much is substance?

Immersive technology can be alluring. It is a fresh canvas waiting for you to explore. However, just because it is exciting and new doesn't mean it is the right modality for your learners, the right fit for your team, or the best outcome for your organization. Are you considering AR/VR technology because it is novel and might grab some attention? Or is this a necessary tool with which you can finally fully explore subject matter in greater depth?

Imagine if your GPS took you to the wrong location once out of every 10 uses. Now imagine paying tens of thousands of dollars for this mistake. What started as a learning solution for waiters seating guests and delivering meals to wrong tables in an ultra-luxury, fine dining venue became a quest for a learning experience superior to real-world training. Could we do it?

Immersive reality is cool and mysterious, but faculty often have difficulty seeing how to tie the use of it into learning objectives. Additionally, the vast technology associated with it seems out of range for the classroom.  So how do you incorporate what is often a singular experience into a classroom opportunity? More importantly, how do you engage students as content creators? This session will address the pilot experiments and result of a multidisciplinary classroom approach using virtual reality, 360-video, and Google Expedition into coursework. The results speak volumes to where this is going.

Augmented reality is a widely-used technology in games, marketing, and everyday apps, but what about learning and development? Where do you get started? How should you use it? Finding answers to these questions can be difficult and cause developers to overlook the potential this technology holds. We will answer these questions and more through discussion, development, and interaction.

How do you go from a concept to a VR platform with global distribution and analytics that proves efficacy? Producing VR content is challenging without a long-term plan for software monitoring and iteration. Where do you start?

We've talked theory and design for years regarding machine learning-powered AR products. It's time to share business-focused case studies that will illustrate the process, warts and all, of bringing advanced AR to the front lines of businesses.

How does the largest employer on the planet, Walmart, attract and develop a new generation of managers who have spent more time playing games than they have in the classroom? How does Fortune 200 healthcare leader DaVita train a global organization to see the world through the customers’ eyes? How do some of the world's largest companies create realistic rehearsal environments to teach technical skills? How do you deploy VR solutions at scale in a large enterprise, safely integrated with legacy LMSs and LRSs? 

Virtual reality hardware, and the computers that are needed to run higher quality headsets, are changing all the time. What difference does it make, and how will that impact learning?

We've all heard about the power of VR for learning and the benefits it's providing some early adopters. But many companies are still scratching the surface with how VR can be used to boost learning outcomes and transform  business operations. Pilots and PoCs have been deployed and then the question arises: "OK, this was great. But now what?" How does an organization move from a successful VR pilot to a wider-scale deployment?

While virtual reality has been rapidly growing as an innovative method to deliver immersive and engaging training, current implementations are commonly isolated and singular experiences. As VR evolves to be more cost-friendly and the release of tetherless headsets (e.g., Oculus Quest) makes it more mobile, there is real potential now for VR training to also be leveraged for multi-user, shared experiences while still keeping engagement levels high.

Virtual reality is the next frontier for scenario-based training, but producing branching scenarios for VR is time consuming, expensive, and requires extensive technical expertise. Each scenario must be programmed by developers using a tool like Unity 3D, leaving instructional designers with little or no direct control over the content. For VR training to meet its full potential, instructional designers must be able to construct complex branching training scenarios themselves. The training content must be easy to author, maintain, and share with your team.

The soft skills gap is real, according to Bersin, LinkedIn, and McKinsey. Employers reported leadership, communication, and collaboration as the most crucial skills to learn from L&D programs. However, when it comes to developing these complex skills, many current offerings teach what to do but don’t provide opportunities to practice and apply them. Learners may try games, role-plays or pre-recorded simulations, but are you truly moving the needle on performance? In light of shrinking budgets, limited time, and lack of effectiveness, how can you demonstrate impactful gains at scale?

Employees need relevant, just-in-time product and service information on the sales floor. Many sales fail because employees don't know the correct information, they cannot access relevant information, or cannot position it in a way that makes sense to the customer. But what if there was a way to deliver just-in-time, relevant, media-rich product/service information directly to the device in your hand?

Enterprise adoption of virtual reality is gaining traction. This is particularly true for L&D organizations tasked to provide training for complex, large-scale operations, often in remote locations. However, the cost, timeline, and deployment challenges may hinder implementation, and the speed of development in the immersive technology sector can overwhelm those looking to take the first steps. Where do you begin?

Virtual reality is gaining traction in learning settings, but implementing it is resource intensive. Convincing your leadership to invest in virtual reality can be challenging unless you can speak to its impact on organizational outcomes. How do you know you're getting your learning bang for the buck?  And how do you know if you really need it?

VR and AR have been around for a while, and the good news is they’re getting easier to do. The bad news is that it’s easier to do the wrong things! Remember PowerPoint presentations in Second Life? Don’t be that person. While there are some compelling examples now showing us the way, we want to make sure we’re doing what makes sense and not missing any opportunities. 

A VR experience can be exciting and rewarding if designed well. It can also be nauseating and short-lived if it's designed poorly. VR introduces a new realm of possibilities and an equal barrage of obstacles. Traditional elearning is designed in a flat, 2-D space. The 3-D space of VR is entirely different. We'll walk through the top 10 techniques to design an effective VR environment (and the common mistakes designers make). You'll learn about uncanny valley, detective mode, toddler mode, the fourth plane, and other popular terms used around VR/UX design. We'll introduce some recent tools on the market, and techniques that can help produce early prototypes and UX testing. We'll also show some of our favorite VR experiences and share secrets to their UX success.

Getting started with augmented reality can be hard and require complex code. What if you are not a coder and still want to build some level of augmented reality for your learners? Luckily, Wikitude Studio makes it easy to build augmented reality experiences.

More companies are realizing the effectiveness of virtual reality for training. Getting excited about virtual reality doesn't mean you have to reinvent your entire training program. Chances are, you've already developed great learning content, eLearning courses, and even ILT sessions. But how do you incorporate virtual reality into your existing learning program?

Pop the hood on any car or truck and you see the engine. What you can't see is how the engine works. You can't look at it while it's running, you can't easily teach this in a lecture or by telling students to read their textbooks, and there aren't many diesel resources available for instructors. Many industries face similar problems how to teach what the learner can't see. Additionally, the diesel technician industry faces a shortage of workers and those who are entering the profession have less mechanical know-how than previous students. We were faced with the challenge: How can you give students a realistic view of how an engine works and help them rapidly build skills?

Imagine designing a VR experience that enables the learner to explore a 3-D world; practicing, succeeding, failing, and learning along the way. Imagine also that this passes your IT department’s security requirements and produces tons of data that is all nicely organized and presented in analytical charts that actually provide meaningful results. Designing an engaging VR experience in the headset is the "easiest" part of the solution. How do you implement and deploy in your corporate environment? How do you safely deploy content behind the firewall? Moreover, how do you connect the data from a learner's experience in the headset to the LMS? How do you implement xAPI and a LRS to gain the full spectrum of data? We'll outline how to do so.

HP has been successful in teaching the concepts of an inclusive workplace to its employees. However, after sessions were over much of the feedback centered around how best to put those concepts in action. HP needed a learning solution that reinforced key concepts covered during traditional classroom sessions, and also illustrated practical application of those skills. Because this topic relies heavily on soft skills, HP wanted to prepare employees with practical conversational skills that promote inclusion. HP required a self-contained solution that learners could engage with on their own time. They turned to virtual reality as way to model and simulate office discussions in a way that integrated the classroom lessons into scalable, interactive, and highly-engaging modules.

The frequency with which virtual reality is being deployed continues to grow in both enterprise and academic environments. However, there are still barriers that need to be overcome in implementing and expanding the use of these technologies in the context of learning and development.

Corporations invested $87.6 billion on training in 2018, according to Training magazine. Current technology and design in the industry makes learning dull, costly, and restricts the ability to learn in an effective way. Investing in AR/VR/MR can help solve all of these problems, while helping learners increase knowledge retention and speed up their time to competency.

Organizations are currently experimenting with virtual reality that creates presence and provides an immersive, firsthand experience for multi-generational employees to improve their hands-on skills at work. Instructional designers can now use Adobe Captivate 2019 to create virtual reality projects.

When facilitating a simulation-based activity, do you sometimes hear participants say, "Yeah, but in the real world, I would do this…"? How real do you need to get with AR, VR, and screen-based simulation activities? In our world of emergency nursing students, realism is critical to meeting the learning outcomes of the program. In order to increase competence and confidence, our emergency nursing students need to be exposed to a multitude of patient cases in simulation form. So which simulation modality (AR/VR/screen-based) provided the most realism and was the most practical—in terms of design, development, and delivery— for on-campus and distance students?

Simply put, augmented reality requires a device, content, a marker, and a software platform to use to overlay the content over the real space. For corporations, the challenges can be real: employees don't have company-issued devices, the content is private and shouldn't be accessed publically, markers can detract from the corporate brand, and custom AR software development can be expensive and hard to deploy. How can learning and development teams even approach the AR conversation without fraying nerves and breaking budgets?

There's been substantial buzz around augmented reality as a tool for learning through interactivity, as well as for reaching colleagues who don't have access to traditional eLearning programs. New data has shown that doing so can potentially double the level of attention compared to TV and online learning, with 70% higher memory encoding when compared to traditional media consumption. Despite this, AR has only recently begun to garner mainstream attention. Many professionals still believe it's expensive and difficult to adopt, with uptake remaining conservative. What if we could dispel these myths and prove that not only are there simple, affordable tools to work with, but that the outcomes of making L&D more engaging and memorable are worth their weight in gold?

While it’s become easier to find strong use cases for immersive technologies like AR and VR, it’s still a challenge to go one step further and build solid business cases for this technology. Like every industry, the education and training fields are looking for business models for adopting immersive technologies that make sense for our needs. But what should be the focus for building a business case in education and training: learning outcomes, learning engagement, both, or something else? What details do we need to build a strong business case for investing in these immersive technologies in our field?

Creating an exciting experience in the VR headset is only part of the solution. How do you ensure it's instructionally effective? Even with new technology the basic principles of instructional design must still be applied: challenges, activity, reflection, and feedback, to name a few. In addition, you’ll want to consider the unique features you can leverage in VR experiences related to time, stress, and 3-D movement, as well as the user challenges of wearing a VR headseat. And because virtual reality is a large investment, you’ll need to be especially sure your solution is effective to ensure there's a strong ROI.

Virtual reality (VR) learning experiences are dramatically increasing in popularity. But how do you get started building VR? What if you have a low budget, or no budget at all? The cost of new technology and software, and the development time required, may thwart would-be VR developers. However, there are now several free software and media options that make it simpler and more affordable than ever to build VR.        

How many times have you tried to explain to a new employee, visitor, or client how to find you in your complicated (or not so complicated building), only to have them get lost in an endless sea of corridors on their first visit? Maybe you have an environment you would like someone to see but they are not physically able to experience it for themselves, like a museum or art gallery? You can do all this and more with a series of 360 photos imported into an eLearning authoring tool to create a virtual interactive tour.

You have a vision for how to use virtual reality in your training program, but the idea of working with a team of developers can feel daunting. Unfamiliar terminology and misunderstood objectives can potentially derail your project before it ever gets off the ground. In addition, many VR development teams have limited experience working with the training industry and bring years of assumptions and processes to the table that might seem alien to you at first. You need a process that you can rely on that will streamline your collaboration with your development team, reduce the chances of failure, and lead to a VR project that achieves your vision.

You need to provide on-the-job training to your new employees without sacrificing customer service and daily operations. Additionally, you don't have the resources to provide a safe and economical way of replicating real life situations. What if there was one solution that combined technical skills with behavioral change through branched learning, all from one tablet?

Kaiser Permanente's Health Plan Workforce Development (HPWD) group, which is always striving to bring leading-edge technology to its learning solutions, believed that AR and VR delivery would be especially important in engaging and retaining younger workers over the next several years. But with its finite resources, HPWD needed to figure out how these technologies could be used most effectively. Of HPWD's many learning audiences (ranging from sales and marketing to underwriting and product support) and their disparate learning needs, which would truly benefit from AR or VR delivery? And how should initial, proof-of-concept forays into these technologies be targeted?

Virtual reality offers instructors a high-impact tool for teaching and learning by engaging learners in a realistic 360-degree environment. While the instructional benefits are extraordinary, there have been two major challenges facing most collegiate classrooms; technology cost and instructional relevance. During this session, attendees will explore innovative VR assignments, utilized over the course of a year, and their evolution in online and in-person courses. Moreover, attendees will discover how to create effective and engaging VR assignments on a public institution budget.

In this session, The eLearning Guild’s director of research, Jane Bozarth, hosts an overview of The Guild’s most recent reports on AR/VR in learning and development efforts. Joined by Cindy Plunkett, co-author of the Guild's April 2019 report, “Augmented and Virtual Reality for Behavior Change,” and The Guild's David Kelly, the session will cover user data regarding popular tools and approaches, as well as current and planned use. It will also offer a review of the literature on leveraging these approaches to change behavior/improve performance.

One of the best ways to learn how to apply a new technology is to learn from the proven practices of early adopters. By listening to the lessons they learned from their projects, you can make your initial projects more effective, while also reducing the risks generally associated with piloting a new technology.

Augmented reality (AR) enhances the world you're in with supplementary visual information. It can seem quite technical and out of reach, but did you know you can begin creating augmented reality content right now?

When you hear the words “augmented and virtual reality,” do you automatically think about either Pokémon GO! or putting goggles on your face? Did you know you could experience VR without a headset? Did you know you could augment a sandbox? To fully appreciate AR and VR and how it could be useful, you should understand the entire spectrum of mixed reality technologies. It’s a lot more than meets the eye!

Global training demand exceeded the classroom capacity required to enable enough technicians to rebuild critical vehicle components. eLearning fell short transferring the "hands on skills" required for the job, but travel by instructors to remote locations was proving too expensive and inefficient. A better solution was needed.

Augmented reality is a powerful tool that can help your team achieve learning goals in a meaningful and hands-on way. But within the L&D field, there's a lot of misunderstanding about what exactly AR can do and how it can be implemented. And this can make it a challenge get everyone at your organization—and even just your team— on board with what you need to know to make an augmented reality learning program a success.

We currently have a trillion-dollar problem in healthcare; 47 million people live with dementia worldwide, and this number is growing rapidly (World Alzheimer Report, 2016). What if we could reduce these costs by changing the way we approach customer service for our clients? Evidence shows that if we are able to make each client’s experience more personalized by providing in-the-moment performance support to our staff, we can be more effective and efficient. If we can provide our staff the ability to use their mobile devices to see the customer's care preferences, life history, favorite music, hobbies, and more on demand, we can provide that personalized care. Now, what if we could solve these problems with an elegantly simple solution leveraging augmented reality?

While augmented reality’s emergence as a technology is currently behind virtual reality, many would argue AR has much broader potential in the context of learning and development in the long term. We’ve begun to see examples of augmented reality used to support and build knowledge, but we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of how we could use this technology for training and just-in-time support.

Confused about VR authoring tools? There are many available; some are low-cost or free while others are expensive. How do you compare the features to know which one is going to work for you and your VR projects?

We’re giving you two opportunities to catch this popular session – at this time or on Tuesday in Session 105.

3-D content is phenomenally cool—from basic polygonal models to full human-like characters, buildings, vehicles, and even complete environments. Because 3-D content has historically taken vast resources (i.e., time and money) to create, 3-D resources are often relegated to video games, simulations, and/or VR only. However, creating, editing, or obtaining 3-D models for everyday use in eLearning doesn’t have to be cost-prohibitive or take a lot of time.

Put yourself in the shoes of a new leader joining your organization. They must successfully balance assimilating the culture, learning processes, training, financial briefings, building relationships, and other countless tasks. That is a lot to expect from an individual that needs to hit the ground running and lead their team to success. At Holiday Inn Club Vacations, many of our leaders claimed they could have been more successful from the start if they understood how all of the business units work  together. This was a wake-up call for our organization to completely disrupt the way we onboard leaders, and create a new kind of experience that would show them how to lead successfully within our culture.

We’re giving you two opportunities to catch this popular session – at this time or on Tuesday in Session 407.

We’re giving you two opportunities to catch this popular session – at this time or on  Wednesday in Session 702.

New technology can take time to learn, and can be especially challenging without hands-on experience. At our organization, new slot machine cabinets and components were continuously being introduced, and it was a priority to make sure technicians felt confident in their knowledge when installing them at a casino property. But it was quite pricey to fly field service technicians out to Las Vegas for training each time something new came out.

Augmented reality allows you to enhance your current environment, recognize objects, and add additional experiences to help learners learn and explore more of the world around them. This is great, but how do you get started and do you need to be a coder to create these kind of experiences?

As a small department at Ally Insurance, it would be easy to rely on the old standby of instructor-led classroom facilitation for all topics— especially the boring ones. But we know that instructor-led classroom facilitation is not always the best, most efficient, or even most innovative way to communicate content to learners. What if a small but mighty department could create and implement a whole new way to learn and retain information?  What if they could quickly be the leader in L&D for their entire company with this new way of learning? And what if that new way was radically fun and techy?

In California, a fifth grade teacher encourages his students to roam a museum freely. No problem: it's an augmented reality learning experience. In Texas, a teacher creates an undersea environment where students move through schools of fish identifying flora and fauna, without getting wet. Students do this without buses or chaperones or brown bag lunches. Augmented and virtual reality is already a part of K-12 education. What can we learn from what they’re doing now?

There is often a divide in many virtual reality products. There are the products that have detailed graphics that are not very interactive, and there are those that have a lot of interactivity with low quality graphics. However, what if there was a way to have both, without having to worry about the frame rate of the VR device dropping?

Virtual reality is becoming more mainstream every day. However, use cases can sometimes be theoretical or hyperbole so that when you peel back the layers, it isn't practical, cost-effective, or the right way to best deliver the learning. This, combined with the fact that most instructional designers are very new to how to design an effective VR experience, poses a costly risk for L&D organizations.

VR and AR can generate a great deal of data, and that includes data in the xAPI format. One promise of this data is that it can be used to create predictive models that can classify learners; helping L&D departments to better serve them with appropriate content.