The document discusses the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) and game-based learning in corporate training, highlighting that traditional methods often yield poor results. It provides examples of successful VR implementations, such as Walmart's 'Spark City' game, which significantly improved training outcomes and employee engagement. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of measuring training success through various data tracking methods.

1. Games, Simulations
and Digital Reality
Anders Gronstedt, Ph.D., President Gronstedt Group
Training Industry Conference & Expo
Monday, June 16, 4:45 PM-5:30 PM

2. Captain Sully
trained in a
flight simulaltor

3. 150 passengers:
33 brought their life vests,
and only 4 put them on properly

4. safety video:
<3% success rate
flight sim:
100% success rate

5. “Barely 10% of the
$200 billion spent on
corporate training in
the U.S. delivers
results. ”
Harvard Business Review
Why?
▪ segregating training from
work
▪ information delivery out of
context
▪ timewaster instead of change
management strategy
Source: Mihnea Moldoveanu and Das Narayandas,
“The Future of Leadership Development,”
Harvard Business Review, March/April, 2019
Waste
Results

6. some training has a
negative return
“$8 billion a year spent
on diversity training is
largely ineffective and
often counter
productive”
Frank Dobbin, Harvard University
professor
Source:
Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, “Why
Diversity Programs Fail,” Harvard Business
Review, July/August, 2016

7. VR:
“flight simulator”
for any skill
learning by doing in the actual
performance environment
embodied cognition -- building muscle memory
maximizing “reps and sets”
repeated movements in virtual reality causes changes
in brain structure, which in turn improve performance
in the real world

8. secret sauce of VR:
the power of “presence”
unlike mediated experiences like video,
the brain treats the VR experience like a real one
it’s like going to another place

9. when to use VR? when real-life training is too
expensive, dangerous, or inconvenient

10. when to use VR? visualizing the invisible or hard to access

11. “the ultimate empathy machine”
Virtually Being Einstein
makes you smarter AND
less age biased

12. when not to use VR?
if real-life training is
more cost effective
if it can be done as effectively on a flat-screen
with video or eLearning (i.e. software training)

13. capture the
digital footprint
head and eye tracking:
length and frequency of looking at
the mirror
voice tracking
hand and body tracking:

14. learning effectiveness, A/B testing
Lowe’s found 36% better recall using VR compared to video for home-improvement tasks (source)
Honeywell improved skill retention from 30% to 80% with VR (source)
training time
United Rentals shortened weeklong training by half with VR (source)
cost saving
Farmers Insurance saved $300K a year in reduced travel costs, training accident investigators in VR (source)
life saving
Novartis’ lab sim saves lives
measure the success

15. cross-platform development
phone, iPad, PC, game
console, VR, AR, etc…

16. game culture
Fortnite
alone has
a quarter
billion
users

17. mobile game explosion 63% mobile gamers
are women

18. meta study of 65 studies and
6,476 trainees found game-
based learning to be superior
to traditional learning
Game-based
learning works

19. race car drivers and police officers
learn from Gran Turismo
Jann Mardenborough beat
90,000 entrants in the GT
Academy, now a professional
racing driver

20. what’s the Gran Turismo
of the retail industry?

21. Walmart created its own

22. Download and play “Spark City” on your phone

23. goal: train on “One Best Way”

24. starts in the backroom at 7.00 am
game play
correct behavior
rewarded with score,
thinking bubble,
happy dance and
confetti rain
customize avatar

25. complete various tasks
spills
slip and falls
carrying large objects

26. if the player doesn’t walk the customer
to the aisle, negative feedback:
• lose points
• avatar makes an angry gesture
• customer feedback in a thought bubble.
when a customer is within 10 feet,
the player needs to ask if they need help.
“10-foot rule”

27. clock provides
time pressure
scores:
• inventory
• customer
service
• sales
additional scores
in later levels:
• profit
• fast
• friendly
• clean

28. end-of-day feedback

29. + managing team
level progression
grocery
lawn &
garden
bakery & deli
apparel
cashier
reach certain scores to level-up
adding new tasks to each level
+ additional
management tasks
+ customer
service
reach certain scores to level-up
adding new tasks to each level
skills relevant for any job, Walmart or not
entertainment
+ business acumen
+ training team
+ security

30. delegate and develop

31. Praise
motivating and
developing your team
mentoring

32. security

33. and made public,
search for “Spark City”
on the app stores.
played for 30-minutes a day during the
one-week Walmart Academy
deployment

34. results
net-promoter question, “how likely are you to
recommend playing the sim to a Walmart
colleague?" average of 9.625 on a 10-point-scale.
classes that played the game improved 22% from
pre-assessment to post-assessment.
300,000+ downloads on app stores

35. development
Unity: cross-platform game engine
powers half of all mobile games and
70-90 percent of all VR and AR

36. content
development close client collaboration on the script

37. art: environments

38. art: characters

39. programming

40. how to get started

41. 1. experience real VR take your team
to a VR arcade!
low-end VR headsets
don’t offer presence
PC-VR with room-scale and
hand controllers is required for
complete sense of presence

42. 2. identify a business critical training
opportunity that has to be done with VR or game
visualize the impossible
practice tasks that are
too dangerous, too costly, or
too inconvenient to do in real life
empathize with customers

43. 3. hire a team of seasoned
VR/game learning developers
3D artists
programmers
instructional designers

44. 4. measure results
build the biz case
digital footprint:
track how long you
look at the mirror

45. Mobile device management
UID
TOKEN
USER
EXPERIENCE
XAPI DATA
CONTENT
LEARNING
RECORD
STORE
FIREWALL
LMS and/or
Enterprise Content
Management
LEARNING
RECORD
5. Enterprise
deployment
VR headset

46. anders@gronstedtgroup.com