VR [we are] Training - Workshop on Collaborative Virtual Training for Challenging Contexts

Virtual reality provides great opportunities to simulate various environments and situations as reproducible and controllable training environments. Training is an inherently collaborative effort, with trainees and trainers working together to achieve specific goals. Recently, we have seen considerable effort to use virtual training environments (VTEs) in many demanding training contexts, e.g. police training, medical first responder training, firefighter training etc. For such contexts, trainers and trainees must undertake various roles as supervisors, adaptors, role players, and observers in training, making collaboration complex, but essential for training success. These social and multi-user aspects for collaborative VTEs have received little investigation so far. Therefore, we propose this workshop to discuss the potential and perspectives of VTEs for challenging training settings. In a one-day online workshop, researchers and practitioners will jointly develop a research agenda on how currently underrepresented aspects of social and collaborative work can be integrated into VR-supported training. This workshop will focus on two themes: (1) Multi-sensory experience: novel collaborative interfaces for VTEs (e.g. joint use of tangible devices, strategies for preventing simulator-induced negative effects); (2) Multi-user interaction: collaboration in VTEs between trainers (two trainers run a scenarios jointly), trainers and trainees /the trainer controls the scenario for a trainee), and trainees with each other (e.g. two trainees solve an exercise together)