EMBEDDING VIRTUAL REALITY INTO COMPETENCE RECOGNITION

Nearly every third present occupation will disappear by the year 2030. While today’s workplaces play a significant role in competence recognition, a degree is only one part of developing skills and competences (Ministry of Education and Culture 2019). Therefore, we need to shape the politics of lifelong learning’s core, which is expertise instead of degrees. Virtual reality (VR) can offer both educators and businesses an exciting possibility for optimising competences and learning processes (Melo, Bentley, McAllister & Cortez 2019). The use of VR has been studied to some extent, but mainly in school and university contexts. Its use has been limited in terms of employment training and competence recognition (Huang, Rauch & Liaw 2010); therefore, this area requires further study. The aim of this research is to develop and test the use of VR in identifying needed competences in working life and in supporting employment training so that language skills are a minimum constraint. The main target group is immigrants in Finland. This ongoing research will be conducted in a Living Lab.