Professionalization in Safety: Creating Effective Learning Environments

Abstract

Health, Safety, and Working Conditions Committees (CHSCT/CSE) play a major role in the day to day organization of companies and safety professionals have a crucial position in such meetings. It goes far beyond a set of regulatory knowledge and communication skills, but this unique atmosphere cannot be taught using classical academic lectures. In order to create an effective learning environment, the post master Management of Industrial Risks (MS MRI) from PSL University-Mines ParisTech, has successfully experimented for the last 3 years the use of role-playing games to allow students to embrace the inherent complexity of these type of committees. In order to design effective learning environments, four perspectives have to be taken into account. Each of these perspectives are centered on respectively student, knowledge, assessment and community. The purpose is (1) to promote connections between acquired knowledge and current academic tasks, (2) to learn with understanding instead of simple acquisition of disconnected sets of facts and skills, (3) to provide feedback to students that give opportunities to challenge and improve their learning and (4) to provide affinity between the school and a larger professional community. This paper describes how this curriculum has been designed, set and achieved. It involves the participation in the game play of several highly-experimented professionals: an occupational physician, an engineer and inspector from the Regional Retirement Insurance and Occupational Health Offices (CNAMTS), a labor inspector, a labor union representative, a paralegal and the director of the postmaster himself. They are mixed with students that play not only safety professionals but various positions in the committee. Results from surveys to assess this CHSCT game play experiment are presented and perspectives regarding innovative learning design for safety professionals are discussed.