COVER STORY
LEARNING THE ROPES
NEBOSH examines the importance of offering employees alternate training methods and formats; blending on-screen content with classroom presentations.
Training delivery in health and safety has often had a bad name. Too often, courses have been delivered solely in the form of ‘chalk and talk’ classroom presentations accompanied by PowerPoint slides full of text or more recently as passive web-based modules with a series of screens and perhaps a test at the end.
This is unlikely to aid the information retention that is vital for health and safety training to be effective. As the generations which grew up with the internet become a majority of the workforce, they expect more engagement with, and more stimulation from, any work activity, including training.
Even the most stimulating content delivered in the same format over hours will tire the learners and cause their focus to drift. Mixing training formats, as in blended courses with a mixture of on-screen content – delivered via computer or phone app — and classroom presentation, adds variation.
In face-to-face sessions, generating participation and reinforcing the learning can involve breaking trainees up into groups to practice sequences of actions or roleplay scenarios.
The use of gaming can support learning providers in terms of stimulating and engaging learners. Game mechanics such as virtual-reality simulations and game techniques, such as awarding points and tokens for success, challenges to pass from one level to another even introducing competition between learners, helps draw them into the experience. This mixing of challenge and reward is more likely to immerse even those who are not native gamers, the challenge and aid retention of the information. Enabling learners to test decision making in a safe way while seeing the results of their actions generates the sense of consequence that research shows is a key driver of behavioural change. For training involving expensive equipment or hazardous environments, it is now possible to create a digital twin – a virtual representation of a physical system or process – on which learners can practice immersively without risk to themselves or the equipment.
Though they should bring training courses alive, learning aids should avoid being too gimmicky, to avoid the risk that trainees remember the style more than the content, like clever advertisements where everyone recalls the scenario but not the product being promoted.
Varying solely screen-based or classroom type training is also important because of those methods gets
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“CATERING FOR THE DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES, AND FOR THE PREFERENCE OF ALL LEARNERS FOR VARIETY AND INTEREST, IS MORE LIKELY TO MAKE HEALTH AND SAFETY TRAINING A STIMULATING PART OF EMPLOYEES’ WORKING LIVES.”
optimum results with individuals in only one of the commonly agreed categories of learning styles.
The four learning styles are:
• Visual: These learners, also known as spatial learners, absorb information best through graphic representation, such as diagrams and illustrations or photographs.
• Auditory: This group learns best from the spoken word, so a classroom presentation or narrated software package may be ideal for them. They can reinforce the learning by repeating out loud what is presented to them.
• Kinaesthetic: also known as tactile learners, these individuals learn through physical activity, acting out the learning, so roleplay or handling and practising use of equipment is ideal to help them retain information.
• Reading/writing: this type of learner is best suited to academic study and will benefit from text-based support to classroom presentation. They benefit from taking extensive notes and being tested in writing.
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