Changefied is creating virtual training solutions to assist learners with various skill sets, such as navigating public transport and IT skills. In 2023, the firm assisted the Netherlands government in teaching young special education groups by leveraging immersive social learning tools for practising situations like public transport routes.
Moreover, Changefield’s public transport solution presents a tool to help with specific government-level support networks by providing affordable and repeatable solutions to assist sectors with operational shortages in areas such as special education and support groups.
In a recent exclusive interview with XR Today, Tim Van Dam, the General Manager of Changefied B.V., explained:
Virtual public transport, this was the first game we started four years ago, when I came in contact with someone who wanted to have a process for youngsters to learn to travel by public transport. Youngsters were people with autism or light mental disability. They have to practise in a safe space to learn to go by public transport.
Van Dam noted that learners can repeat immersive training sessions, creating an accessible, affordable, and repeatable training scenario; “if they’re not able to do it, to learn it in the first time, they can use it multiple times.”
Van Dam also explained how the Netherlands has shortages in its Buddy system, whereby a younger person with conditions such as autism is accompanied on public transport for training and familiarising learners with these public settings.
Changefied’s solution helps to fill a gap in the region’s social care network by allowing learning groups to experience everyday situations in safe, repeatable virtual settings; “now virtual reality they can prepare for this journey,” Van Dam remarked.
Vam Dam also noted, “[Goverment] hardly have any budget or time.”
The Complete Learning Package
Erik Welling, the firm’s Lead Software Engineer, also noted that the public transport simulation tool is “the complete package.” Welling adds that the tool can simulate “everything that can go wrong in public transport, everything you might bump into, it’s all there. In the end, you basically experience everything that can go wrong – so you know how to handle all of those situations.”
Welling also added:
What’s also very important in our games is that you as a player are really in control of the character. It’s not just an explanation telling you what to do, you as the player are responsible for actually performing those tasks and also remembering what to do at what points. So these buses and trains in our games they will go whether you are in them or not. So it’s really your task as a player to navigate this world.
Moreover, Welling explained that a great benefit to immersive learning solutions such as Changefied’s immersive public transport and computer IT skill-building solutions is “the ability to practise as much as you want, so you get rid of some of these restrictions.”
Immersive Learning to Build IT Skills
Changfied’s IT skill-building immersive learning platform, Virtual TechLab, is a VR solution that assists with IT training procedures, and teachers can mentor a student during an immersive learning scenario via a tablet.
Changefied has designed the Virtual TechLab solutions to help a wide range of users, from experienced IT instructors to trainees and students, enabling inclusive and democratized IT learning opportunities. The firm claims that the Virtual TechLab immersive learning system is easy for teachers, and teachers can adjust training sessions from tablets to suit students’ learning needs.
By using Virtual TechLab, learning institutions no longer need to limit opportunities due to budgetary, time, and hardware restrictions. Additionally, by utilizing a VR training service, teachers no longer need to worry about the consequences of real-world training mistakes, which can be time-consuming and costly.
Welling added:
Normally, [students] get taught how to do this in regular lessons, and then also some practical bits. They have quite a few issues with this because it can cost a lot of money and a lot of time for the teachers to be able to set up all these computers so that these students can work with them. Components can break very quickly. Then you have to find out which component is broken and get a replacement. These students really don’t get enough practise with actual computer parts, and so doing it like this in virtual reality makes it possible to really practise as much as is needed.
Working with End-Users and Leveraging Feedback
Welling noted that Changefied is “finding partners to work with to get more of a large scale research going to test the benefits,” stating that the firm is “actively working on” pursuing user data and feedback.
Van Dam also noted that Changefied received positive feedback via its public transport solution. Meanwhile, the firm is still developing and “building up” its training scenarios, putting “more stimuli in it and different scenarios.”
Vam Dam also noted that based on the first levels that Changefied built; it assisted a “fairly high percentage of people” who can now go by public transport thanks to the firm’s immersive learning platform. – “what we learned in the last year is we have loads of stakeholders. We didn’t expect that there would be so many stakeholders in this process,” Vam Dam said.
Welling also added:
I think it’s very much still a growing industry. So for a couple of years, stand-alone VR headsets became a common thing, which really made it possible to do XR solutions in the first place. We know there’s still very much a lack of content and also lacking in community. There are here and there some institutes that are really trying to push innovation and I think we all have to get together, try to take it to the next level to really. Try to get these multiple stakeholders together. We, as the software company, have to do that right now.
To learn more, check out XR Today’s exclusive interview with Erik Welling and Tim Van Dam.
