Unfiltered LIVE: Ask the Experts | Interplay Training in the Trades

Question: What are your thoughts about online training such as interplay learning?

Drew Cameron; EGIA faculty member and Founder of Flow Odyssey:

Obviously, that’s what we have to do to some extent right now with social distancing. It’s mandated to some extent that we do this. In the absence of live training, by all means any modality that you can do is going to be important. It’s not about maintaining your edge, it’s about sharpening your edge.

My understanding of interplay is that it’s not only online, it’s virtual. It’s a pretty slick virtual reality that you can get and I highly recommend it. It’s one of those tools you can bring in that makes work in the trades cool again.

In virtual reality, you can actually have the goggles on and work on an air conditioner or a furnace or something like that – that’s wicked stuff! So yeah, I highly recommend an interplay learning.

I had a few clients that work with it and speak very highly of it. Their people love it and fight to get on the schedule because that’s the thing, they’re intentional about it. They schedule time and you have to put in so many hours per month to get your certifications. They’ve created internal certification with badges gamify the process of learning certain skills. These guys fight to schedule their time because they think it’s so cool.

Not only that, it’s new way of learning. Even though there are the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers still in the in the workforce out there, they’ve got involved in it too. It’s not just a Millennial and Gen Z thing, it’s become cool for everybody. The quality of the education, at least from what I can tell, is first-rate. So, I highly recommend interplay learning. I’m sure there are other packages out there that you could look at as well.

That being said, this type of thing while being online is also live, so there’s a different element there. There’s a different energy to this because we have interaction. I was on a coaching call yesterday with 13 people and there was interaction, which is a different thing versus putting somebody down in front of the computer and saying, “Watch a video and take a test.”

I would basically say this is engaging and interactive, so that’s second to interplay, being that you’re completely immersed yourself in a virtual reality, then there’s non-interactive things like watching a webinar. Although any form of training is worthwhile, especially during the pandemic, I don’t think any of it will ever replace a live event.

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