Author: Amal Bilal, Class of 2028

Figure 1: A man using a virtual reality headset.

Safety training is an important tool that helps prevent accidents by enhancing one’s ability to identify and analyze risks while performing dangerous tasks. Typically delivered through safety manuals, videos, lectures, slideshows, and drills, safety training methods have several limitations: they do not provide feedback to participants, have difficulties illustrating realistic scenarios, are costly and time-consuming, and are often not engaging in nature. Virtual Reality (VR), a powerful tool that allows the user to experience a virtual world, shows promise at being a more effective tool and engaging experience for participants during safety training. To test this, Massey University researcher Dorothy Scorgie and her team explored VR’s effectiveness compared to traditional safety training methods.

The team conducted a systematic literature review that involved defining research questions, identifying relevant work, assessing its quality, summarizing evidence, and interpreting results. The team developed nine research questions, spanning the topics of VR safety training, effectiveness of the training, and outcomes of previous studies comparing various training methods. Through screening a multitude of papers for eligibility based on relevant information, the team narrowed down their initial search to 52 studies. Next, the researchers analyzed these studies to compare the effectiveness of VR and traditional safety training methods.

Since 2013, data has illustrated an increase in the use of VR headsets for safety training, mainly in the fields of construction and fire safety training. VR safety training is also now being used in aviation, mining, pedestrians, earthquakes, electricity, lifeboats, chemicals, gas-leaking, and workplace safety. Researchers analyzed the effectiveness of these training methods through the Kirkpatrick and BST models, which evaluated each training program based on participants’ reactions, learning, and behavior. In half of the studies, the VR training programs consisted of instructional feedback: warning the user after making mistakes and providing overall feedback (orally or in writing) after training. The findings indicated that VR-based training outperformed traditional training methods, leading to generally superior knowledge acquisition, user experience, and knowledge retention. Results showed that VR-based training surpassed traditional methods 47 times and had equal effectiveness in 13 instances, with some studies showing an overlap in results. Only one study demonstrated a preference for traditional methods. Ultimately, using virtual reality safety training is a highly effective alternative to traditional training methods, resulting in participants gaining more immersive experiences and becoming better equipped to handle potentially dangerous situations in the future.

Works Cited:

[1] D. Scorgie, Z. Feng, D. Paes, F. Parisi, T.W. Yiu, R. Lovreglio. Virtual reality for safety training: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis, Safety Science, Volume 171, 2024, 106372, ISSN 0925-7535, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2023.106372.

[2] Image retrieved from: https://www.pexels.com/video/man-playing-a-virtual-reality-game-7547574/