LSL interactive video collaboration increases safety awareness

The ECS Learning Societies Lab has produced an innovative interactive video for undergraduate civil engineering students undertaking traffic surveys.

The video was produced in collaboration with the University's School of Civil Engineering and the Environment and the School of Psychology; team members on the project were Dr Tom Cherrett, Sarah Maynard, Dr Gary Wills, Dr Joe Price, and Dr Itiel Dror. The aim was to produce an interactive video for undergraduate civil engineering students showing the risks associated with filming traffic on a busy urban road. The video was filmed from the perspective of how not to undertake the fieldwork and was based on a well practised technique that employed for registration plate capture surveys over a number of years.

Once filming had been completed, a system was created to allow students to interact with the video by clicking on elements which they deemed to be a hazard and then ask them to explain the reasons why. A facility to store the student input was developed to allow the lecturer to view all the data allowing for customised feedback to each student.

The video was demonstrated to the EUNIS 2008 conference Aarhus, Denmark, last month, where it won second prize in the Dorup E-Learning Award. The LSL conference paper was entitled: 'Risk Assessment Education: Utilising Interactive Video for Teaching Health and Safety'.