Keywords

1 Introduction

Current vocational training systems often fail to fulfil high risk industry’s training requirements [1]. Even when organizations invest heavily in their training, they still may not achieve their training objectives (despite the expenditure, time and resources devoted). The need for effective workplace learning has encouraged industries to incorporate various technologies in their training [1]. Virtual Reality (VR) is the most recent technology used to train employees for extreme event scenarios. VR training occurs in a safe and controlled environment which allows the replicable testing of extreme scenarios.

Implementing virtual reality as a training environment initiated form military and has become popular between various industries such as medicine, pilot training, surgical skills, driving, train driving, rehabilitation, educating children and others [2]. VR gained its popularity since:

  • It is not feasible and in most cases impossible to duplicate the extreme scenarios in physical world. Therefore, time and cost creates limitations to use real life training.

  • There are an endless number of scenarios to train workers for, and it is not feasible to create one off training such as putting a building on fire for fire fighters to train them. Also, there is no guarantee to have a successful training in one session and there might be a need to repeat the session.

  • There is serious risk involved when conducting training in physical world. Such as training miners for situation where the sealing collapse.

  • In virtual world trainees can experience and repeat all scenarios as much as they need to become master in it and always there is a room to make mistakes.

However, like any other training method, VR based training must be evaluated. Unlike operational training, it is not possible to evaluate the success or usefulness of the safety training sessions solely based on the outcome of the training session (since we have to wait for accidents to happen and afterwards, we might be able to conclude how much training transfer from VR to real world has had happened). Although systematic frameworks for evaluating VR-based training are well documented in aeronautics, they need to be adapted for more socially complex situations like underground mining where workers need to perform collective tasks in a confined and hazardous environment (natural risks and dangerous machinery). To date, research on VR-based safety training (as opposed to operational training) for the mining industry is scarce; The paper first introduces the case study; then, it describes the methodology before presenting evaluation results. Finally, we draw conclusions regarding the effectiveness of VR-based safety training in the context of our study.

2 Participants and Study Context

2.1 Technology-in-Use

The research was conducted in collaboration with Mines Rescue Pty Ltd, a training provider for the coal mining industry in Australia that operates four training stations in New South Wales (Woonona, Lithgow, Newcastle, Singleton and Woonona). Each centre delivers classroom, onsite and VR-based training programs ranging from induction courses for new recruits to highly specialised courses for more experienced miners.

Our study focussed on training programs developed for the mine rescue brigades. These brigades are made of five to seven highly specialized volunteers who act as primary responders in case of major mining incidents or accidents. Each volunteer is an already experienced underground miner. The methodological framework was designed and tested at Woonona station, located only a few kilometres from the University of Wollongong.

Although Mines Rescue Pty Ltd has invested in a variety of VR technologies (individual domes, 360° immersive theatre, GEN4 desktop immersive simulation and, more recently, Oculus Rift), this paper focuses exclusively on the training programs developed for the 360° immersive theatre (360-VR). The 360-VR is a 10 m diameter, 4 m high cylindrical screen that displays a 3D stereo, 360° virtual environment, providing a fully immersive experience to participants equipped with 3D glasses (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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360-VR training (Coal Services Pty. Ltd.)

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2.2 Participants

Between March and July 2015, 94 trainees interviewed for this study and all of the participants in the study were male, aged between 24 and 64 years, with their time spent in mining and mines rescue ranging from between 5 and 40 years. The participants in this study were 94 experienced underground miners who had volunteered to join the rescue brigade.

3 Methodology

In users’ opinion technique users are asked to give their opinions on the conducted training, the method of the training and the features affecting the process. This technique is only useful if it is not possible to measure performance and training outcome. However, this technique does not reflect on knowledge creation and training transfer [3].

The researcher attended all the 360-VR training sessions to observe trainees experiences. She also distributed the questionnaires directly before and after these training sessions. The pre-training questionnaire was distributed to participants prior to them attending the 360-VR training. The aim of this questionnaire is to measure the trainees’ state of mind and experience with technology prior the training. After the VR training, the post-training questionnaire was distributed to measure the participants’ learning and experiences as a user. Other key questions asked about the participants’ perception of the perceived level of realism, the success and the usefulness of the VR training.

Primary data was obtained using Likert Scale based Questionnaires. Our pre- and post-training questionnaires were based on items taken from established questionnaires such as GEM [4], ITQ, PQ [5], SSQ [6], DSSQ [7], IMI [8], UIQ [4] and GEQ [9]. Due to limits on our testing time (which prevented use of the full questionnaires) key items taken from standard questionnaires to measure each factor of interest. These factors had been identified by previous studies as being important for the success of VR training. In order to check that each group of items was still measuring the same factor (i.e. as the original full questionnaires), ensured that the Cronbach’s Alpha value for each factor was above 0.7.

4 Results and Discussion

Tables 1 and 2 summarise the mean values for each of the pre-training and post-training factors where Likert scales ranging from highly disagree (0) to highly agree (5).

Table 1. Mean value for pre-training factors
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Table 2. Mean value for post-training factors
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Even though trainees had limited gaming experience (M = 1.4) but they have been motivated (M = 4.2) to attend the training. Moreover, they reported better than average scores for “ease of use” (M = 3.6), “enjoyment” (M = 3.8), “presence” (M = 3.3), “usefulness” (M = 4.09) and perceived learning (M = 3.5) (scores out of 5).

To better understand the success of 360-VR as a training tool Cross-tabulations has been performed. Cross-tabulations between “perceived realism” and “perceived success” (Table 3) and between “perceived realism” and “perceived usefulness” (Table 4) showed that while trainees typically found the training sessions useful and perceived them to be successful, many felt that it was not really consistent with their real life experience. It would appear that perceived usefulness plays important role in forming the perception of success with high correlation (r = .609, P < .05) and that the level of realism is not necessarily a deciding factor (r = .356, P < .05).

Table 3. Perceived success * perceived realism cross-tabulation
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Table 4. Perceived usefulness * perceived realism cross-tabulation
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Additionally, Table 5 indicates 59 out of 85 trainees found the 360-VR session to be useful and 32/85 stated 75–100% it was successful as a training environment to deliver content.

Table 5. Perceived success * perceived usefulness cross-tabulation
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5 Conclusion and Future Research

It is concluded that mine rescue brigadesmen typically had positive learning experiences in 360-VR. Even though VR training is not common practice in the mining industry it appears to have been well received.

However, there is a need for further research as:

  1. 1.

    The current sample size was only 94 participants and only 85 has responded to all the questions. Thus, to be able to generalise our findings about VR as an industry training tool, larger sample size is needed.

  2. 2.

    While the current study focussed on the importance of the VR’s technological features and the users’ training experience, other factors were observed by the researcher to be important, such as (i) the trainees’ attitude toward the technology prior attending the training; (ii) the fit of the technology for the particular training scenario; and (iii) the industry’s culture are important factors. To the best of our knowledge these three factors have received little empirical attention.

  3. 3.

    Since 360-VR is being used as “safety training” tool it is almost impossible to be able to measure its success or transfer of training immediately as oppose to “operational training” where trainees performance can be measure straight after they are back to the mine. For safety training accidents must happen first and if it happened then brigades men performance might be measured. Therefore an alternative assessment strategy has been considered for future research.