With continued success, the Immersive Learning Time 2019 on June 6th was an opportunity to bring together HR and training decision-makers as well as our community of Digital Learning experts. This event allowed us to introduce in an immersive and original way the new functionalities of Virtual Training Suite while providing networking opportunities at the same time.

Skills development: an essential paradigm for vocational training

In a drive to modernise vocational training, the French State, training organisations and companies are making lifelong learning an absolute priority to return to the ranks of the leading countries. With the Professional Future Act, the training plan becomes the skills development plan, which must now be truly mastered over the long term at the end of the training. This plan also involves integrating new pedagogical methods and, in particular, digital learning tools (serious games, simulations, immersive learning, etc.), the effectiveness of which has already been demonstrated in several international studies. This transformation also leads to a redefinition of roles: from trainer to training designer, from participant to actor in his training, from manager to learning facilitator.

A software offer oriented towards “sustainable skills”.

As an expert, if we do not pay attention to it, the greatest difficulty in the training process is the well-known phenomenon of forgetting what has been learned, some time after the training, whatever it may be. To promote retention, Serious Factory has been contributing for several years to an essential stage of learning: the regular application of the various skills.
Thanks to its expertise in digital learning, the publisher developed, in 2012, the Virtual Training Suite software solution, of which the authoring tool VTS Editor is the first brick. Powerful and scalable, it allows instructional designers to create their own training simulations on their own. Thanks to intuitive functional blocks, the software allows scenarios to be customized with virtual characters and environments, and finally to work on the 70% missing part of the learning that comes from practice.
Virtual Training Suite also focuses on the development of interpersonal skills with software choices oriented towards the realism of facial and physical emotions, to contribute to the skills expected by employers. Indeed, according to the Pôle Emploi study of March 2018, 60% of employers believe that behavioural skills are more important than technical skills.

Functional evolutions to work on interpersonal skills with version 4.0

To meet these challenges, the new version 4.0 includes a sceneries configurator. It allows the designer to create sceneries himself directly in VTS Editor, in complete autonomy. The virtual characters can thus be positioned (position, orientation, sitting/standing) according to the pedagogical choices made by the designer, in a graphic environment as close as possible to the learner’s reality, thus promoting his or her commitment. Other customization needs are offered for maximum immersion and interactivity: background image customization, scene light setting, media integration.

Understanding the unsaid in order to better understand a verbal exchange is essential to develop one’s interpersonal skills. Serious Factory continues its development around behavioural training with a new panel of emotional animations. They complete the emotions already existing within the authoring software VTS Editor. The bodylaguage animations are even more realistic to better match the type and intensity of the characters’ facial expressions, for a pedagogical relevance taken to the extreme.

In addition to automatic animations, Serious Factory includes in this new version a new block of specific animations. The designer now has at his disposal a set of animations adapted to the situation, which he can trigger at any time: shrugging, acquiescence, different types of waiting postures, gesture of refusal, etc. Learners are now faced with very realistic situations and will have to make the right choices in this particular context, in order to acquire the right automatisms for their daily lives.

 
With this new version, companies and training organisations can finally put the learner back at the centre of their concerns for continuous skills development throughout their professional careers. The result, already measured and observed by Serious Factory clients, is an increased commitment of learners in their training paths, as well as a real acquisition of skills directly applicable in concrete situations, of which the users of the following are the guarantors.