Reflections on the Adoption of Virtual Adaptive Learning Tool for Industrial Training.

Ensuring proper education for employees represents a key factor in most of the industrial sectors. Several researches have been conducted in order to test the efficiency of new educational methods for improving their flexibility and effectiveness. At the same time, the introduction of emergent technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR), is offering new solutions for industries for both reducing cost of training programmes and for better tailoring those on the needs of the users. Based on a first cross-industry reflection, the paper analyses how the combination of adaptive learning methods with VR could bring substantial benefits to companies (railway and process industry) in replacing the actual training programmes based on traditional learning approaches. Firstly, the paper offers a short overview on the features of adaptive learning and VR. Secondly, a consideration on the main requirements on railway sector and process industry is conducted in order to link them with constrains appeared during the current training programmes. Finally, possible solutions based on the previous findings are highlighted in order to sketch a possible working framework for creating a Virtual Reality Adaptive Learning Tool. Our research, thereby, shows how long-term strategic educational policies can impact the performance of the industries.