NEWS

Last month, on 28th and 29th April, Health and Safety Games Partnership met again in Heerlen (The Netherlands), in the Open Universiteit facilities.

The aim this time was to present results of the second stage (of seven) of the Project, focused on gathering information about mobile learning: questionnaires to construction workers and a focus group with experts from health and safety. Construction, technology and migration field.

So we firstly presented the main conclusions of the more than 350 answers we got so far from construction workers. The questionnaire is still open, therefore they are not the final ones. However, we can suggest that:

1. Simulators are the most accepted games.
2. More than 60% would download a serious game for learning.
3. Real situations are the best for helping to learn.
4. A serious game will be welcome, since it is more attractive for learning than theoretical classroom.

In this time, each partner has configured its own National Advisory Group, which is a group of multidisciplinary experts that work voluntarily, giving a valuable feedback and an external evaluation on our progress results.

In the case of Spain, experts come from Health and Safety of FLC, INSHT, Eurocontrol, IMASP, and self-employed workers as health and safety teachers and construction experts. And bloggers specialized in health and safety: PrevenApp and, Enrique Alario or Software PRL.

In a first analysis, we found common points, such as the chance of success is among youth workers, since they are likely to play and play in smartphones. They see mini-games as a great complement or support for health and safety training, although they cannot substitute theoretical and practical classes.

We also presented some scenarios for mini-games. The health and safety topics to be addressed were chosen by partners in the previous meeting in Vicenza (February 2016), on the basis of the results obtained in a questionnaire delivered by every partner last January to health and safety; and construction sector experts (overall results will be soon in http://www.fundacionlaboral.org/micrositepreview/hs-games).

The topics are the following:

• Work at height
• Personal Protection Equipment
• Machinery
• Electricity
• How to act in emergency situations
• Collective protection measures
• Hygienic risks (physical, chemical and biological)
• Load handling
• Tidying and cleaning
• Portable and hand tools
• Falling of objects
• Safety signs

Now, we have to work in two paths: in the first stage, in developing a pedagogical framework for the games, taking into consideration the theories about mobile learning and our activities results. On the other hand, we will keep working on the feasibility of the games and match our games approaches within the options of AR Learn platform.

The next Project meeting will be in Düsseldorf (Germany) with the aim of present the pedagogical methodology for our games and some examples of mini-games.