Navigating Challenges: Behind the Scenes of 360 Videography for Procedural Learning at Fennel Tyres International

We recently coordinated with our 360 videography partners Behemoth to capture procedural learning footage at Fennel Tyres International. Here is a real life look at what it’s like to create a piece of content and what can go wrong and why you would still consider this approach worthwhile overall.

The Use Case:

The use case was one of procedural learning, namely changing a tyre on a heavy vehicle. To complete this task safely and efficiently, there are at least 10 critical steps the operator must perform. Generally this procedure is taught in a face to face nature, as traditional eLearning is ineffective.

Creating the Content:

Creating learning involved three main components, a Subject Matter Expert to demonstrate the procedure, the space and equipment (I.e. a truck, spare tyre bay and the tools), and in this instance a 360 videographer, although this is often done by the L&D team themselves.

Here is where it got interesting. On the day, nation wide internet outages threw the day into disarray. The truck, scheduled for a morning start, arrived at the facility hours late. Long after, the time for which the videographers and SME had planned. The flow on effect meant that the filming could not be completed in the time remaining and another day needed to be scheduled.

The filming required a number of 360 degree images to provide a realistic context for the learner, and also a number of 2D video and images as close ups to show detailed procedures. Additionally, the SME was required to ensure the correct procedure was demonstrated and provide narration where appropriate.

Why bother?

There is a reasonable bit of effort and cost involved here, so why bother. Well the answer is pretty simple; once a high quality piece of VR content is created, it will easily pay for itself many times over. Firstly, by reducing or eliminating the need for SME time to train this task, secondly by reducing or eliminating the need for real vehicle to be present (and equipment to be taken off-line), and thirdly in the increased level of standardisation it provides.

So while there is more effort involved in creating a VR experience than perhaps an eLearn, or doing nothing, and continuing to train people in person. In the long run there is are a number of pretty compelling reason to invest this effort now. Create it once and reuse it a 1000 times. Moreover, with an easy to use VR creation platform like Facilitate, content can easily be adapted in the future as processes change.

Big thanks to our videography partners Behemoth; they are leaders in the industrial videography space and great to work with!