Kallidus surveyed over 200 learning L&D professionals to find out what they really think about using VR for learning. Ninety-five percent of the respondents said they see VR as being useful for enhancing L&D. Only a small minority (8%) feel VR is “just hype”; 81% think it has “real potential” for learning, and a further 11% are prepared to go one step further, calling VR “the next big thing”. 

The survey reveals that over half (53%) of the respondents have VR at the top of their list as the next new mode of learning they most want to implement, ahead of virtual classrooms, mobile learning, game-based learning, and social learning in terms of priority. Just 2% of the respondents said their organisation is already using VR for training.

Tim Drewitt, Product Innovator at Kallidus, said, "Although only a third of the L&D professionals we surveyed have had any hands-on experience with VR, the vast majority are very excited about its potential to add something special to the learning mix. Time will tell, but it's possible that this exciting immersive technology could be adopted faster than previous new learning approaches and may prove to be as game changing in learning as the advent of the PC."

The top three subject areas in which L&D professionals would most like to see VR being used in their organisations are technical-skills development (64%), health-and-safety training (54%), and onboarding/orientation (41%). Encouragingly, L&D professionals are thinking beyond hard-skills development and can also see the potential VR offers for developing interpersonal, customer-service, sales, and leadership skills.

Respondents perceive the biggest benefits of using VR to be helping to create a more engaging learning experience (89%); making high-risk or impractical training achievable (84%); and helping the organisation to be more innovative (81%).

Philip Pyle, Sales and Marketing Director at Kallidus, added, "The survey highlights that the learning profession doesn't seem to be daunted by VR. Instead, it sees it as a great opportunity to offer learners something truly engaging and innovative at a time when many internal corporate functions are struggling to catch up with consumer-grade technologies that increasingly feature in people's everyday lives."

Respondents agreed that perceived cost (73%), lack of knowledge on how to use VR (61%), and lack of cultural appetite (38%) could potentially hold the learning profession back from adopting VR. However, as VR equipment and content-creation costs continue to fall, momentum to explore VR's role in training is likely to continue to grow.