Summary of Client’s Challenge

The USF Department of OSHA Safety Florida Consultation Program was funded by the federal government to develop an eLearning equivalent to the print-based version available on The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) website. In this way, it would be more accessible to more students 24/7.

Developing The Basis Of The New Course: Storytelling

Change by Design was selected as the vendor for this project. The best approach to start was identifying the target learner population, then building a story around them. We created a story around a 16-year-old young man working at a local burger joint. In the story, this young ‘archetype’ needed to consistently demonstrate safe behaviors at work so that he could make enough money to buy the used car he wanted and … aspirationally …to win the attention of the young lady he was interested in. We transformed the “Talking Safety”-provided activities into equivalent versions online but modified the approach enough to maintain engagement in an asynchronous learning environment.

Testing The Course With The Target Population

Once the course was developed, Change by Design conducted a pilot with the target audience. We canvassed teens ages 14-17 at two points; where they first experienced the course, and also whent hey responded to a post-course survey. Next they participated in one of three focus groups (divided by age), where we captured qualitative perspectives that gave our findings and recommendations more depth.

Going From Print To eLearning To Virtual Reality

Change by Design then developed a prototype 3D world with several sections:

  • A ‘classroom’ where content was instructed via narration by a virtual ‘instructor’.

  • ·A gamified ‘maze’ where learners encountered challenges that they had to overcome by providing the right answers to questions that arose. We felt that this different approach to testing knowledge would motivate the target population to complete the task.

  • ·A ‘3D burger joint’, where learner avatars were able to explore different areas behind the counter to identify unsafe conditions, such as water on the floors leading to employee falls and staff infections in the bathroom which, when not sanitized, would lead to potential illnesses.

  • A Magic Market kind of unsafe environment, where a thief had entered the building and threatened people with a baseball bat and where the location had other unsafe issues that learners were asked to explore and identify.

This provided USF’s program director with a showcase to federal officials, demonstrating a modern, innovative approach to expand the effort, and help increase funding.