VR and MR technology for safety management education: An authentic learning approach

Abstract

Effective safety management education is essential for improving safety within the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. While new information technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) are increasingly explored to improve safety management education and training, they are currently limited by the lack of pedagogies to guide the design and development of learning content. This paper aims to address this issue by utilising the authentic learning framework to guide the design of a VR/MR lesson for safety management education. The study developed an immersive VR/MR simulation-based activity based on the authentic learning framework. The effectiveness of the safety management lesson using an immersive VR/MR simulation is compared to a recorded video lesson. The results showed that the VR/MR simulation is more beneficial to the participants’ motivation than the video lesson, but not for knowledge improvement and perceived lesson effectiveness. The results can be attributed to the difficulties in operationalising the guidance factor in the authentic learning framework. The key contributions of this study are threefold: (1) the study demonstrates that the authentic learning framework can be used for guiding the development of VR/MR simulation and recorded video lessons for safety management education; (2) the analysis finds that the VR/MR simulation improves motivation for learning, but not knowledge and perceived effectiveness of the lesson; and (3) three guidelines are suggested to improve the design of VR/MR educational applications.