How AST revolutionizes safety training with Virtual Reality
AST offer a multitude of training courses to companies to qualify their personnel for using specific machines and devices. As experts for occupational safety, they specialize in utilizing E-Learning solutions to offer a wide range of trainings and certifications. To make sure all learning content is directly applicable, their training courses take a practical and feasible approach.
For this reason, AST’s safety engineer Matthias Müller always keeps looking for new ways to enhance AST’s training courses with new technology that help participants engage more with their training material. For him, VR is the answer to delivering immersive, easy-to-use and practice-oriented training to companies.
Pioneers of digital safety training
In the past, AST have already incorporated VR into their training portfolio, offering specialized practical training via VR simulators, making them pioneers in the field of workplace safety. The theoretical part of these courses, however, was conducted through a conventional e-learning platform, which did not allow for an interactive learning experience on par with the practical training recreating life-like environments. Thus, AST’s goal was to create a Virtual Reality solution based on existing course material and to flexibly integrate it into their e-learning platform, adding a visual and interactive component that made the learning contents even more palpable.
To make creating a myriad of VR courses for theoretical training as cost-effective and time-saving as possible, AST were looking for a powerful, yet easy-to-use tool that allowed them to create most of the content themselves with minimal resources and in a short amount of time. With VRdirect Studio, they found the solution that catered to those needs the most.
Transforming theory into practice with VRdirect
Using the VRdirect platform, AST is now able to offer theoretical trainings and qualifications certificates in VR as well. One of the first projects implemented with VRdirect is a digital manual teaching participants on how to safely handle earth-moving machinery. The solution allows attendants to view and engage with the course material in an immersive and interactive environment.
For AST, being able to realize this pilot project with as little overhead as possible was one of the core aspects of choosing VRdirect. For example, they were able to create the solution’s content by reusing existing course material and directly transferring it to the VRdirect platform. According to Matthias Müller, the entire visual 360° material was completed in only one day. The complex qualification certificate for earth-moving machinery was developed time-efficiently with manageable resources: often Müller could do most of the work himself, outsourcing the design to VRdirect to speed things up even further.
Take a look below at an excerpt of the entire project and see for yourself how virtual reality can be used for training purposes!
Flexible training solutions to be used wherever and whenever needed
Working closely together with VRdirect, AST were able to complete the project in a short amount of time, offering their clients a fast, yet impactful solution. The solution is implemented into AST’s e-learning platform, allowing for seamless integration into the entire course system. This way, both participants and instructors can view and evaluate progress. Since VRdirect Studio offers a multitude of publishing options, course participants are able to access their training module anytime, at any place – via VR glasses, their smartphones or a common web browser. This way, the solution can flexibly be used in On Location trainings (via VR-glasses) as well as web-based trainings.
A long-term partnership to revolutionize learning experiences
In the next few weeks, AST will fully roll-out the first VR-projects based on VRdirect. For the future, Matthias Müller plans to make all of their theoretical courses available via VR. For this, he will keep relying on VRdirect as a partner, again stressing how the easy-to-use platform and the possibility to publish applications to a multitude of devices makes VRdirect Studio the best solution for their goals.
