The classroom of the future is on its way, encompassing new technologies that will lead to more effective training. The new techniques can provide training to personnel across all the Armed Forces, in high-risk industry, in schools, universities, hospitals, at home, or for corporate training.
During a visit to QinetiQ’s Training Innovation Facility in Farnborough, military VIPs were treated to demonstrations of how this emerging technology will make training more efficient and effective. The demonstrations focused on training for both new and experienced submariners, showing how navies could bring down costs by expediting learning and improve platform availability for operations by reducing the amount of sea time required for training.
The Collective Innovative Training Environment (xCITE) event, on 9 March, explored personalised and distributed learning by combining QinetiQ’s human performance research with three training capabilities from academia and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs):
Adaptive learning
Through online learning, the system will learn from a students’ strengths and weaknesses and can personalise the training through pace and content to accelerate their progress. (SME: CogBooks)
Gamification
By using competitive gaming elements – challenging themselves or others, and receiving rewards, the trainee becomes an active participant rather than passively receiving information, aiding training retention. (SME: Gamification Nation)
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality headsest immerse the learner into a virtual world with their team – in this case a submarine – where they can interact with colleagues and rehearse potentially life-threatening scenarios in safety. (SME: Immerse Learning)
Helen Dudfield, Chief Scientist for Training & Human Performance, QinetiQ, said: “As technology drives social and cultural change, training styles must keep up with shifting generational attitudes and expectations. Rigid training in fixed workspaces will make way for courses that offer the flexibility to learn wherever and whenever is convenient. Most importantly, technology can vastly improve the quality of learning by tailoring courses to students’ individual competencies and circumstances. Employers can reap the rewards of a highly skilled workforce at lower risk, and be confident of an excellent return on their investment in their people.”
The event was supported by Dr Ioannis Paraskevopoulos, Senior Lecturer in Disruptive Technologies at the University of Greenwich, on secondment to QinetiQ thanks to a £30,000 award from the Royal Academy of Engineering.
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