In concept, designing a comparative test seems simple enough, but questions like this one must be dealt with. Enter Wallace Judd (President of Authentic Testing Corporation) who had, a number of years earlier, administered identical tests on word processing and spreadsheet software tasks for the same test-takers on the same day. “We were astounded with those results.” He recounts.
“People were not scoring identically in the morning on the same test with the same types of tasks that they had in the afternoon. So I think that will always be a limitation, that’s not going to go away. It’s just that you want to come as close as you can to the accuracy of predicting what some of these capabilities are and I certainly recognize those limitations.” In short, designing a carefully controlled study
requires a great deal of work and consideration. Tere is much more extensive background on the evolution of this testing and the design of the most recent wave of testing covered in this report available in the NCCCO Foundation’s publication.
AND THE RESULTS Here’s how Judd described the result: “Te primary conclusion was that with this simulator, you could make a decision about whether or not somebody was a competent Crane operator. Te classification accuracy on the actual crane was 87%. Te decision consistency in the virtual simulator was 94%. So we were actually able to predict with greater accuracy what people would do on the crane with the virtual system than with an actual Crane!” He does note that with more data, that differential may or may not persist, and the published study is based on a carefully structured analysis of 52 test candidates. But he concludes that, with the simulator, “…we can predict with very high accuracy whether somebody will be able to pass a test on an actual crane”. Te final recommendation of the published paper,
Judd later adds, is that were this to be implemented in the future, “…it’s recommended that only if people get a certain very high score on the simulator would they be granted a certification. if they didn’t pass at a certain level then they might be allowed to retest on an actual Crane and only if they failed dramatically on the virtual reality test would we recommend that they take additional practice before testing on either.”
BENEFITS OF THE SIMULATOR EVALUATION Several benefits of the simulator environment are revealed in the course of this discussion. Judd notes that, “you
ITI’s booth at CONEXPO-CON/ AGG in 2017
can do things that you would be afraid to do… on the actual site.” Te ability to simulate complex or extreme operations in a no-risk environment is analogous to flight training for pilots. Judd adds, “Yeah, if you if you want to practice stalls, you want to practice them in a virtual system not in a real, multimillion-dollar plane.” And of course, cost. ITI’s Zack Parnell notes that,
“…in Houston, Texas right now a lattice boom crane exam costs a thousand dollars, …and to be able to lower that price to a to basically a CBT type exam for 50 bucks is a pretty big savings for people that are - a lot of people in Texas pay their own way to put themselves through to get certified.”
NEXT STEPS Graham Brent sums it up quite simply: “I think it’s really important to understand that VR certification is not right around the corner.” In effect, this is a first word, not a last word, as these results are potentially taken up for consideration by the NCCCO. Tat said, Brent acknowledges that, “this is really a groundbreaking study. Not just in the construction world, the crane world, but I think Wallace would agree in the certification community.” Wallace Judd echoes that, adding that “We want to
have a lengthier study with more candidates to validate the conclusions that we came to in this study.” However, he goes on to add, “but I don’t think that we could have expected a more positive result from this study.” ITI’s Zack Parnell notes that “we’re still collecting candidate tests in Houston. We’re adding data to this set.” We’ll be watching for more developments in this space! y
To read the full NCCCO Foundation report, visit either of these links:
http://www.ncccofoundation.org/can-virtual-reality-play-a-role-in-certification https://www.iti.com/blog/nccco-foundation-report-on-vrs-role-in-crane-operator-certification-testing You can learn more about the NCCCO at
www.nccco.org, more about the NCCCO Foundation at
www.ncccofoundation.org, and more about Industrial Training International at
www.iti.org.
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