ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A SIMULATION GAME FOR IMPROVING INCIDENT INVESTIGATION TEACHING AND LEARNING

Abstract

The construction industry poses significant Workplace Safety and Health (WSH) risk to workers. Contribution to workplace fatalities is higher by the construction industry than other industries. Investigating the occurrences of such events promote learning and equip individuals with the necessary safety competencies to prevent similar events from recurring. Despite the importance of WSH, there are barriers to provide tertiary students in WSH education the practical skills and experience in incident investigations. Studies have shown students lack opportunities to visit sites due to the hazardous nature of construction sites and the lack of spatiotemporal resources to accommodate a large cohort of students on-site. Educators often experience the challenge of limited time and resources at their disposal to arrange site visits with industry practitioners for students. It is also not practical to re-enact unsafe behaviours in reality for students to learn at their convenience. A prototype 2D simulation game, SafeSim Investigation has been developed to simulate an authentic environment for students in learning about the incident investigation as an alternative solution to the challenges posited. The game operationalises the principles of authentic learning as a non-traditional pedagogical approach to provide students with an authentic experience on how incident investigations are carried out. Students work in groups to collect evidence, conduct analysis and provide recommendations as part of the incident investigation process. This study adopts an experimental approach to understand the effectiveness of SafeSim in WSH education on the topic of incident investigation. This study will introduce SafeSim as a simulation-based learning approach and examine its effect on students’ achievement of learning outcomes. SafeSim will also be further evaluated on its operationalisation of the principles of authentic learning and recommendations will be provided for future improvement to the game.