Absolutely. As businesses and governmental agencies recalibrate to address a monumental shift of baby-boomers out of the workplace and into retirement, the training of younger replacement workers is fast becoming mission-critical.
And while accessibility remains a high priority for organizations determined to "get smart" about the way they do business, access alone isn't enough. Increasingly, private- and public-sector organizations need to factor in the most effective and productive way for people to engage with information systems and business processes.
The bottom line? Human potential comes packaged in a variety of abilities and disabilities. Enhancing it has become more of a business imperative than ever before, and immersive virtual learning technologies – serious games – are one way companies can play to win.
Eminently doable
Experts in many fields agree that advanced learning technologies, including interactive 3-D games in virtual worlds, offer an especially effective way to accelerate training, regardless of a trainee's particular abilities or disabilities. By offering real-time simulated meetings, events and collaborative activities in a virtual social world, serious games provide a people-centered, scenario-based environment where participants and their avatars can have a meaningful, consequential effect by "doing" and not just memorizing for an exam. It's the difference between applied experience and book learning.
Or to put it in a way that's less confusing and more Confucian: "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand."
Acting on its own understanding of the importance of advanced learning technologies, IBM hosted a Serious Games Day this month at the company's Research Triangle Park facilities in North Carolina, where industry and academic leaders fostered discussion about the evolution of virtual games and their value in enhancing human potential in all its varieties.