Welcome to the Laser Safety Training Service

The Interactive Safety Training Service is provided by a team of academics from the University of Southampton and independent consultants; Cognitive Consultants International and J.Price.

The team is engaged in leading research and development in the field of interactive and adaptive training aids to help practitioners managing health and safety across a range of domains. A portfolio of interactive and adaptive safety training videos is being developed by the team to teach and assess hazard awareness using the latest research in education, psychology and technology.

The cost of health and safety failures to UK industry is currently estimated at up to £6.5 billion per annum with the construction sector suffering unacceptably high levels of work related incidents. Better health and safety education across all skill levels in the industry is seen as an integral part of any solution. Traditional lecture-based courses often fail to re-create the dynamic realities of managing health and safety (H&S) on-site and therefore do not sufficiently create deeper cognitive learning (which results in remembering and using what was learned). The use of videos is a move forward, but passively observing a video is not cognitively engaging and challenging, and therefore learning is not as effective as it can be. Using the software interactive video learners take an active role. While observing the video, they are required to engage, participate, respond, and be actively involved.

Cherrett, T., Wills, G., Price, J., Maynard, S. and Dror, I. E. (2009) Making Training More Cognitively Effective: Making Videos Interactive. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (6). pp. 1124-1134. read more