If the use of technology has changed rapidly over the last 20 years, vocational safety training is one way of understanding the narrative of those changes. Educational organizations and companies in the field of vocational safety have consistently been innovators and early adopters of technology, outpacing adoption in sectors such as humanities, arts, and sciences education, in countries around the word. Although Australia is often thought to lead the sector in innovation, companies and organizations in the United Kingdom, Canada and the U.S. are also leaders in this sectors. What makes the sector so diverse and active is that it’s not dominated by one type of player. Privately held companies such as SHEilds, public companies such as 3M, start-ups, provincial associations, federal agencies, colleges and certification organizations all compete with each other in this market, offering courses, products and services to individuals and organizations (3M, 2015; SHEields, n.d.). In turn, these organizations market products and services to all kinds of vocational industries: engineering, construction, marine shipping, oil exploration, and much more.
While sectors such as public education, post-secondary humanities and fine arts have been extremely slow to adopt new technologies, early adoption is extremely common in vocational safety training. Technologies that are emerging elsewhere, such as virtual reality and gamification are already widespread in vocational safety training, emerging not years but decades ago. We’ll take a close look at some of these technologies and how they reach students.
Some private providers provide courses and modules to schools. In Canada, Cognisco offers virtual reality and simulation based training for multiple vocations, including equipment operation, welding and engineer (Cognisco, 2015). Cognisco works with schools at the learning solutions at the high school, college and university level. In the U.S., EducateWorkforce provides similar courses, including those using video instruction and virtual reality (EducateWorkforce, 2015). XVR, based in the Netherlands, fulfils the same role (XVR, 2014).
Use of technology doesn’t always involve a third-party provider, however. It can be used directly between a school or licensing organization and its students. Such schools and organizations sometimes develop and supply their own technology, such as BCIT’s use of virtual reality in automotive painting (BCIT, n.d.). This program allows students to practice safe and application of paint on a green screen, without using actual paint. Other schools offer more traditional uses of technology, such as online courses and computer-based assessment. Even MOOC providers, such as ALISON (ALISON, 2015), have begun to offer vocational safety courses.
That emerging technology has been the norm in vocational safety is also recognized by academics, with early studies in virtual reality and simulations for vocational safety training going back to at least 1995 and continuing today (Blotzer, 1995; Hadipriono, 1996; Guo, Heng, & Li, 2012; Sacks, Perlman, & Barak, 2013; Nakai, Kaihata, Suzuki, 2014). Recent studies have looked at computer-based assessment (CBA) in safety training (Gekara, Bloor, & Sampson, 2011), including whether older works do as well as younger workers in CBA (Wallen & Mulloy, 2005).
