NEW TECHNOLOGY FEATURE
THE BENEFITS OF A VIRTUAL TRAINING PLATFORM
THROUGH ‘SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE’ BUSINESS MODEL Specialist training courses provided to first responders at airports, training academies, fire services, oil & gas companies and businesses working in high-risk environments are currently delivered using conventional tools such as tabletop exercises where members meet in an informal classroom setting to discuss roles and responsibilities during an emergency and form responses to a particular situation, or utilizing training aids such as PowerPoint presentations with static images and videos. At the other end of the spectrum, simulated large exercise drills can be conducted using complex and expensive command and control software, these can take time to learn, to operate, and cost tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in a onetime purchase business model. To enable fire chiefs and training managers to provide better training for their teams, they need to have easy and affordable access to modern day tools such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and computer-generated imaging (CGI) platforms that provide interactive and realistic training experiences: the US fire administration states that
the “use of VR technology allows training for incidents that cannot easily be replicated or may be very costly to recreate, not to mention eliminating the hazards involved in ‘live training’.(1)” ARVR Journey also highlights that virtual reality is shaping the new training and development industry in multiple ways(2). Lack of versatility and consistency are also an issue. Preparing training material and finding the right images and video content on the internet for every training session can be a time-consuming and hit-and-miss task that does not guarantee the same training experience across trainees and cohorts. This practice also meant that training managers could be using the same photos or videos on their computers over long periods of time due to the lack of new suitable interactive content which
facilitates a beneficial training sessions and also impacts training quality. As noted by PwC, “employers are facing a dilemma: Their workforce needs to learn new skills, upgrade existing capabilities or complete compliance training, but may not be able to do so in person given the current environment. Yet, training is especially important now, with employees so keen to gain skills, and it may become even more critical when workers start returning to a changed workplace. So how can employers deal with the challenge? (3)” Mismatch between physical facilities
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