In recent years, augmented reality has become a buzzword in the tech industry, with companies like Microsoft and Facebook investing heavily in the technology.
Before it became a household name, Scope AR, an Edmonton-rooted company, was already leveraging AR to transform workforce training.
Founded in 2011 by David Nedohin, Scott Montgomerie, and Graham Melley, Scope AR has emerged as a pioneer in the field of AR-based training solutions.
The three founders, who had previously worked together at Edmonton’s Yardstick Technologies, recognized the potential of AR in helping workers acquire new skills and knowledge.
Nedohin, an Edmonton-based entrepreneur, serves as chief customer officer of Scope AR. Prior to founding Scope AR, Nedohin was CTO of Yardstick, where he oversaw the development of the company’s e-learning platform.
Melley is also still based in Canada. Prior to Scope, he served as VP of Technology for Yardstick.
And Montgomerie, who handles things from the firm’s San Francisco office, is chief executive of Scope AR.
Together, the three founders bring a wealth of experience and expertise to the company and have been instrumental in driving growth and success.
Scope AR, with offices in San Francisco and Edmonton, is known for its flagship product, WorkLink.
WorkLink is an AR-based platform that enables workers to receive real-time, step-by-step instructions on how to perform complex tasks. Using a smartphone or tablet, workers can access WorkLink and view AR overlays that guide them through each step of a procedure.
This allows them to learn new skills quickly and effectively without the need for extensive training or supervision.
“Knowledge is power, especially for the workforce,” the company says. “Training in augmented reality provides effective learning and retention by removing cognitive barriers, creating strong connections to content, and narrowing focus on the subject matter. With WorkLink as your augmented reality training platform, your employees will learn like never before.”
Conventional digital and remote learning methods force an “additional burden on the trainee to re-encode and decode 2D training content into the mental space around themselves,” Scope argues, not without merit. There are many up-skill programs across Canada in 2023 but most these days are fully digital and remote.
“Augmented reality accelerates training by making it much easier and faster remember facts and understand basic concepts,” the company explains. “This then shifts the mental load away from areas of the brain devoted to memory retention and toward the area of the brain responsible for critical thinking.”
Scope’s training technology can be applied to a broad range of industries, including aerospace and defence.
“The Aerospace and Defense industries demand extreme precision and accuracy by highly trained technicians … because the safety of the crew, passengers and our nation depend on complex manufacturing processes,” notes Scope. “WorkLink increases the performance of those technician through faster training, time to information, reduction in human error, and vast improvement in process accuracy.”
Most recently, Scope AR announced the launch of WorkLink Quizzing, an augmented reality tool for accelerating and measuring competency for hands-on procedures.
With Quizzing, enterprises can build and deploy the next generation of learning and development content for their workforce, and simultaneously reduce the costs associated with traditional instructor led training without degradation of training outcomes, according to a statement from Scope AR.
“WorkLink Quizzing ushers in the era of immersive content for learning and development practitioners by delivering a set of tools that allow practically anyone to create a quiz or knowledge check in augmented reality, with no coding knowledge required,” stated Montgomerie. “It’s as if an instructor were instantly in the room with them.”
Now the WorkLink platform and its constituent applications provide all of the components that are needed to make it simple for any training designer to develop an augmented reality module without requiring deep programming knowledge or expertise in 3D.
“WorkLink Quizzing is by far the most engaging and effective training technology I’ve ever seen, and our training customers have told me they aren’t going back,” said Darin Medeiros, VP of Sales. “I believe AR learning experiences will far surpass the passive, click-through, tell-and-test methods that we know lack engagement and efficacy while still providing training reach at a distance.”
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