Technological solutions for promoting employees' knowledge levels and practical skills: An SVVR-based blended learning approach for professional training

Abstract

In professional training programs, how to help learners fully understand the contexts and problem-solving procedure in the workplace is a crucial and challenging issue. Due to the advancements of computer and multimedia technology, many professional training programs have applied technology to provide richer learning content. Blended learning is a learning approach combining online and physical courses. In the blended learning mode, learners can not only learn through multimedia teaching materials, but also interact and practice with teachers and students in online and physical classrooms. However, the conventional blended learning (C-BL) mode mainly presents teaching content through online videos and physical courses. In such a learning environment with one-way information transmission and without experience, it is not easy for most learners to experience the actual situations encountered in the professional training process, which affects their judgment and actual handling performance. In order to tackle this problem, this research adopted spherical video-based virtual reality (SVVR) technology and applied it in a general registered nurse (RN) training program via a blended learning mode. To verify the effects of this teaching approach, a quasi-experimental study was conducted in a RN training program in a large-scale hospital. The experimental group employed the SVVR-BL mode while the control group employed the C-BL mode. The results indicated that the SVVR-BL mode could not only improve learners' learning achievement, but also enhance their problem-solving tendency, meta-cognition tendency, and classroom engagement. The practical skills test results in the workplace further implied that, compared to the learners who adopted the C-BL mode, learners who adopted the SVVR-BL mode had better judgment, analysis, and overall performance of the handling process when encountering practical problems. As a result, SVVR-BL not only helped learners gain knowledge and improve their higher order thinking, but also assisted them in applying what they had learned to solve real problems. This result can serve as an important reference for SVVR-BL studies and the design of professional training programs in the future.