More than 800,000 accidents and 1200 fatalities occur within the European construction industry each year.There is a compelling need to address health and safety training with innovative methods including e-learning tools, which offer several advantages in terms of the effectiveness of instructional activities. This paper reports on the progress of an ongoing Socrates-Minerva project that aims to create an instructional design framework for virtual classes to deliver health and safety training. The research is based on the theory of multiple intelligences (MI), which postulates that there are several independent ability areas that individuals possess. Translating MI principles from a traditional classroom into an e-learning environment represents a new and challenging initiative. Pilot virtual classes (VCs), which are being developed by teams from five different countries, focus on falls from heights, which constitute around 40% of fatalities in the European construction industry. The evaluation of the initial results suggests that learners are generally satisfied with the basic elements of the pilot delivery of the VC on hazards of falls, although more effort is needed to incorporate synchronous elements into instruction and create a more interactive learning environment. Personnel with direct line responsibility for health and safety on construction projects, professional and regulatory bodies charged with ensuring health and safety standards and training, and researchers are the principal beneficiaries.
This paper describes an ongoing EU project concerned with developing an instructional design framework for virtual classes (VC) that is based on the theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) (1983). The psychological theory of Multiple Intelligences (Gardner 1983) has received much credence within instructional design since its inception and has been implemented successfully in a wide array of traditional educational settings. Nonetheless, very little research has been carried out on developing frameworks for elevating MI into an e-learning environment. Specifically, the project hopes to adapt and utilize MI theoretical learning principles to create a virtual class specifically designed for instructing health and safety to construction managers. This paper explores the emerging principles from both theory and practice in order to identify the appropriate methodology for the successful incorporation of MI based instructional techniques in the virtual class design. Guidelines are provided on how the MI concept of ‘entry points’ can best be adapted for the specific learners (in this case construction managers) and class content (in this case health and safety). Of particular concern to this papers examination of ‘entry points’ is the potential for the deployment of intelligence profiling research to create a class tailor-made for construction managers while simultaneously adaptive to each learners individual needs. Emerging from this analysis, the paper will provide core recommendations including how to create problem based instructional activities that are directly related to both the participant’s intelligence strengths and to the class content.
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