Construction safety education model based on second life

Abstract

Construction industry is a very complicated and complex environment that causes high accident rate. The development of advanced virtual world has become an important issue for safety education in order to reduce dangerous occurrence in the construction site. However, most researchers on virtual world still have limitations such as the offline virtual world simulation, the low level of interaction between users in virtual world, and so on. With the regard to this issue, this paper proposes the adoption online 3D world Second Life (SL) platform which allows students to perform role-playing, dialogic learning, and social interaction for efficient and effective construction safety and health education. In this approach, construction safety education model based on Second Life (CSESL) is developed, which consists of the following three modules: 1) Safety information and knowledge preparation to understand the critical causes of accident in construction site; 2) Collaborative simulation for safety case study to transfer unsafe case or dangerous occurrence information to 3D modeling; 3) Reflection on safety lesson for education and training to enhance practical safety knowledge by participating in 3D inspection game. The CSESL advantages and disadvantages are identified by testing the model using a real case scenario. This study presents the potentials and benefits of SL which could enhance construction safety and health education. © 2012 IEEE.