OCAPIAT has launched its own professional training platform in virtual reality.
Crédits photos : XRExpo (Unsplash)
During the Laval Virtual Days Food that took place in October, OCAPIAT, a French skill operator, has announced the creation of a training platform in virtual reality. Irène Azar, Innovation Project Manager at OCAPIAT, presents this solution and explains the stakes of immersive technologies in the context of professional training.
Why did OCAPIAT decide to develop a virtual reality platform?
Today, we are in a world where the digital transformation of the professional training is accelerating in order to meet the skills needs of the labour market. Moreover, in this difficult health crisis context, OCAPIAT must continue its commitment to digitalisation.
With the help of the European Social Fund, OCAPIAT has developed a learning platform technologically based on virtual reality for the benefit of its members. This immersive training platform is an unprecedented novelty in the world of OPCOs and professional training.
What is “Entreprise Virtuelle”, OCAPIAT’s new training platform?
“Entreprise Virtuelle” was implemented into CAMP’NUM OCAPIAT to meet the challenges of centralisation, capitalisation and mutualisation. CAMP’NUM is a collaborative platform for creation and online training management. With CAMP’NUM, you can create, distribute and share different type of virtual reality contents with millions of learners. The contents of “Entreprise Virtuelle” were created with the support of our technical experts and partners.
The project of “Entreprise Virtuelle” was revealed during the Laval Virtual Days Food on 22nd October 2020. Soon, you can discover on the CAMP’NUM platform the very first training module in virtual reality about “hygiene, quality, safety” called AgroVirtuose. This module is the result of a partnership between OCAPIAT, Agro-Spheres and companies in the agri-food sector.
Virtual reality now plays an important role in professional training. How do you explain this?
Virtual reality opens up new learning opportunities and offers a very wide range of possibilities for the development of skills. Virtual reality allows you to capture attention, facilitate memorisation and generate motivation by triggering sensations and emotions.
It is a digital technology that creates a real sensory immersion. It allows us to stimulate, according to the different technologies used, four of our 5 senses: touch, sight, hearing and smell. In addition, the user experiences situations that are close to reality, which encourages memorisation.
What are the benefits of virtual reality for professional training?
In the context of professional training, virtual reality makes it possible to simulate the physical presence of a learner in a virtual professional training universe generated by a computer device: a computer, a game console, a tablet, a smartphone. The learner can evolve in this reconstituted training universe and interact with the elements that compose it. It has been proven that virtual reality also makes it possible to develop user commitment.
Moreover, the realism of the reproduced environments contributes to the attractiveness of the professions, by giving the user the possibility of discovering, in a more playful and risk-free way, professional environments that are sometimes inaccessible. Virtual reality makes it possible to experience situations that are difficult to reproduce in real life and to free oneself from risks, negative impacts on the environment, limitations on travel, constraints on the use and cost of equipment, time limitations, etc. In short, to free us from the limitations of reality.
