JFF’s Alex Swartsel and Kristina Francis in “Designing an Equitable Future for Immersive Learning”
JFF’s Alex Swartsel and Kristina Francis in “Designing an Equitable Future for Immersive Learning”
October 24, 2022
At a Glance
JFF’s Alex Swartsel and Kristina Francis discuss the power of immersive learning to transform training in Chief Learning Officer.
The use of immersive learning technology as a training tool is increasing at schools and workplaces across the country, promising a faster and more democratized mode of teaching people new skills. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies—together known as extended reality—can support the development of both in-demand technical skills and foundational skills like communication.
In an opinion column they wrote for Chief Learning Officer, Jobs for the Future’s Alex Swartsel and Kristina Francis outline ways to ensure that immersive learning technologies are designed and implemented equitably.
To illustrate how this can be done, they discuss JFF’s Skill Immersion Lab initiative. The product of a JFF partnership with SAP and immersive learning provider Talespin, the Skill Immersion Lab offers professional skills training to high school students who co-design their own culturally responsive VR learning modules. Swartsel and Francis also mention pilots JFF has designed in partnership with Meta to demonstrate how small and medium-sized businesses can improve their competitiveness by using AR and VR technologies to upskill their workers.
[To] ensure immersive learning lives up to its full promise as an equitable learning and development tool, we need to go a step further to empower workers and learners to help shape these virtual environments themselves...
Alex Swartsel, Deputy Director, JFFLabs and Kristina Francis, Executive Director, JFFLabs, in Chief Learning Officer