Comparing the effectiveness of AR training and slide-based training: The case study of metro construction safety

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Metro construction poses significant risks and is prone to severe safety accidents. Safety training is critical to mitigate risks and reduce the number of accidents, as it allows workers to enhance their skills in risk identification, risk assessment, and risk response and ultimately reduce accidents. However, traditional training methods used today, such as slide presentations, videos, or text-based materials, provide a passive learning environment, which can limit their effectiveness in knowledge transfer. Augmented Reality (AR) has emerged as a promising tool for training, allowing trainees to have an active learning environment. Nevertheless, research on assessing the effectiveness of AR safety training while comparing it with traditional methods is still limited. This study aims to compare the short-term and long-term effects on objective performance measures and subjective evaluations of both traditional and AR training. This is done by developing a new AR safety training for metro construction and comparing it with an equivalent slide-based safety training with 72 participants divided into two training groups. The selected safety case study covers the entire safety risk management process, including risk identification, risk assessment, and risk response. Results indicate that AR training is more effective than traditional training in terms of short-term knowledge acquisition of risk identification and long-term knowledge retention of risk identification, risk assessment, and risk response. These findings can have implications for the design of future safety training guidelines and recommendations.