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What we learn by doing.

Articles on VR training, safety training, learning technology and what actually works on the industrial work floor.

Engineer rehearsing with a VR headset and controllers in a workshop
Technology · 7 min read

Why VR training is more than a gadget

In industry VR is still too often seen as an expensive gimmick. But for roles where mistakes are fatal and rehearsal is impossible, it is the only training format that genuinely works.

2026 Read article →
01 All articles
Hands operating the control panel of a machine on the work floor
Technology

QR and NFC on equipment: instruction at the place of work

The least spectacular technology in this field and often the most useful. A sticker on the machine pointing at the right instruction, provided you answer one question properly.

2026 6 min
Operator in a cleanroom suit working a machine through its screen
Technology

Adaptive learning: skipping what somebody already knows

An engineer with twenty years of experience gets the same module as somebody on day one. Adaptive material solves that, provided you have enough content for it to work with.

2026 6 min
Hand operating a large touchscreen full of settings and readings
Technology

Learning analytics: what the numbers from your LMS do and do not say

Practically every learning platform reports completion. That is the figure that says least. Four measurements that do mean something, and the reversal nobody makes.

2026 7 min
Aerial view of a port area with terminals, tanks and wind turbines
Technology

360-degree capture: the cheapest way to show a site

Between a flat photograph and a full 3D model sits a form that often gets skipped. Fast to produce, immediately recognisable, and with a limit people underestimate.

2026 6 min
Aerial view of a sprawling chemical complex beside the water
Technology

Photogrammetry: scanning your installation instead of modelling it

The biggest cost in 3D work is the model that does not exist yet. On installations from the nineteen-eighties there is nothing. Scanning is an option, with sharp limits.

2026 7 min
Engineer wearing a VR headset during a practice session in the workshop
Technology

WebXR: VR without managing headsets

What VR programmes come unstuck on is rarely the simulation. It is the cupboard with twelve headsets nobody charges. WebXR removes that, and costs you something else.

2026 6 min
A hand typing on a laptop keyboard
Development

Maintaining multilingual material without translation chaos

Making five languages is doable. Keeping five languages current is where it goes wrong, and where organisations quietly fall back on one language not everybody understands.

2026 7 min
Automated production line with a control screen in a factory hall
Technology

Visualising work: when 3D, animation or a digital twin pays off

Some things cannot be explained in text because they happen where nobody can look. Which form of visualisation suits which problem, and what it costs.

2026 7 min
What does it cost to have training material built?
Approach

What does it cost to have training material built?

Quotes for e-learning run from a few thousand to well into the tens of thousands for what looks like the same thing. Here is where that difference comes from, and the question you should be asking.

2026 8 min
Engineer rehearsing with a VR headset beside a training dummy on a fall mat in a workshop
Approach

When do you choose e-learning, microlearning, video or VR?

The format often gets chosen before the problem has been defined. A practical order for turning that decision around, and the question that actually makes the choice.

2026 8 min
Man in glasses on a phone call with a hand against his head
Approach

Why e-learning projects die in the concept phase

Projects rarely stall on the build. They stall the moment a steering group is handed a forty-page blueprint and feels nothing about it.

2026 7 min
Several engineers rehearsing at once with VR headsets in a workshop
Technology

VR training: who is it really for?

VR sells itself at a trade fair and does not sell itself back in a business case. An honest boundary around where it pays off and where it is an expensive detour.

2026 8 min
Technician working at a station with process control on screen
Development

From SOP to learning module: converting technical documentation

Your procedures contain everything somebody needs to know. They were simply never written to learn from. Here is what sits between those two forms, and what you should not automate.

2026 8 min
Participants following a classroom session in a training room
Approach

From classroom to blended: what changes for your trainers

The strongest resistance to digital training rarely comes from the participants. It comes from the trainers, and it is a legitimate concern you have to take seriously.

2026 6 min
How AI is changing industrial training development
Future

How AI is changing industrial training development

AI won't replace subject matter experts or instructional designers. But it will change what takes weeks into what takes days, and shift the bottleneck from production to strategy.

2026 6 min
Experienced specialist operating a press in a factory hall
Approach

Capturing expertise before it retires

The operator who knows why the reactor behaves differently in winter will be in his garden in two years. What he knows is written down nowhere, and that is fixable while he is still here.

2026 7 min
Crew in overalls and ear protection on a platform of an installation
Approach

Training in your people's own language: why English is not enough

In your mother tongue you understand it. In a foreign language you hope you do. With safety instruction that difference is not academic.

2025 7 min
Operator working the panel of a CNC machine
Approach

Assessing what somebody can actually do: from knowledge question to competence

An assessment that measures whether somebody clicked through the module measures nothing. Here is the difference between knowing and being able, and how to assess the second.

2025 7 min
Identical monopiles and transition pieces ready on a pontoon in the harbour
Approach

Standardising without becoming generic

One programme for ten sites saves money and loses support. The distinction that solves it: what has to be the same everywhere and what has to differ per site.

2025 6 min
Control panel with switches for lamp test, operating mode and emergency control
Development

Procedures change. Your training material does not.

Practically every organisation has training material that no longer holds. Not through neglect, but because the cost of updating is higher than the pain of outdated material, until something goes wrong.

2025 7 min
Speeding up onboarding for technical staff
Approach

Speeding up onboarding for technical staff

Nine to twelve months to working independently is the norm at many companies. A large part of that time does not go into learning, it goes into waiting.

2025 7 min
Worker in orange workwear on the site of a power station
Approach

Microlearning on shift work: learning between tasks

Scheduling a training day around a shift rota is a rostering problem that rarely gets solved. Short modules sidestep it, provided they are designed properly.

2025 6 min
Racks full of electronics and cabling in a technical installation
Technology

Learning apps for staff without a desk

Most of the industrial workforce has no laptop and no company email. For that group the phone is not an extra channel, it is the only channel.

2025 7 min
Breaking the forgetting curve: repetition that does work
Approach

Breaking the forgetting curve: repetition that does work

Within a month most of a training day has gone. That is not a motivation problem but a design problem, and it is fixable.

2025 6 min
Two workers in hi-vis shaking hands at a project site
Safety

Contractor site induction for 200 people in three weeks

Every turnaround starts the same way: hundreds of people who do not know the site, and one coordinator who has to induct all of them. Here is how to make that scale and stand up to an audit.

2025 7 min
Hands typing on a laptop, with a view of a work site in the background
Development

AI in training material production: what it does and does not do

AI does not write good training. But it does change which training projects are feasible at all, and that is a bigger difference than it looks.

2025 8 min
Control panel of a press brake with emergency stop and setting dials
Approach

Instructional design for technical audiences

Engineers and operators are not a difficult audience. They are a specific audience, and most teaching material was made for a different one.

2025 7 min
Hand operating the controls of a valve actuator on an installation
Safety

Demonstrably competent: records that survive an audit

At an audit the question is not whether somebody can do it. The question is whether you can show it, and that is where most organisations stumble, not on the training itself.

2025 7 min
A row of yellow safety helmets ready for use on a construction site
Safety

5 signs your safety training is not working

Green ticks, high completion rates and satisfied participants. And still the incidents keep repeating. These are the five patterns that point to training built to be ticked off rather than to be effective.

2025 8 min

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M

Milan

Business development, STARK Learning