Now into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the limits between physical, digital, and biological spheres are fading. This represents new ways that technology is embedded within society—bridging the gap between human and digital interactions. What's more, this revolution is enabling organizations to digitally support the experience-based learning process in the real world.

With this is as a backdrop, three main trends are starting to change the learning environment for companies:

• Augmented reality (AR): This is when reality is augmented with digital elements, such as graphics, sound, and touch feedback. For example, remember the impact of Pokémon Go, with people all around the world playing and engaging with the game. Another example is Ikea’s app that lets users see how a piece of furniture would look in a specific spot in their homes.

• Virtual reality (VR): While AR brings digital elements to reality, VR shows a totally 3D-simulated environment. Using interface technology that connects a user with an operational system, people can experience 3D graphics or 360-degree images that form a whole different environment than the real one. In addition to entertainment and gaming, VR has been applied by healthcare and military for training purposes, such as simulating parachute flights and surgeries.

• Bots: These are applications that run automated tasks through machine learning, such as a chat bot with automated replies to text entries. Commonly used examples include Amazon Alexa, Google Talk, and Apple Siri, which respond to voice commands.

Although these trends are not necessarily new concepts or technologies, they are finally mature enough to be adopted at the enterprise level. What do you think would be the key enabler for bringing these three trends to your organization?

In most cases, it’s going to be a digital device that continues to change the way we interact both at work and at home: smartphones. In fact, all major brands available now support the delivery of AR, VR, and bot technologies.

By combining our smartphones (whether BYOD or provided by the organization) with the enterprise capabilities of new solutions such as PTC Vuforia, Adobe Captivate, or Travantis Lectora, organizations now have access to in-house, secure, and rapid development that they can easily tailor to add value to their business model or its processes. This will enable L&D practitioners to introduce new learning possibilities—without investing heavily in several different devices. Indeed, that’s why mobile is bringing enterprise digital learning experience to the masses.

Want to dig deeper into these ideas? Join me at ATD TechKnowledge 2019 for the session Mobile Apps Best Practices: Transform Training Into an Interactive Experience. We will explore best practices for shifting to a mobile-powered learning environment and how to augment existing programs with mobile apps to revitalize learning and create an interactive experience.