This paper was presented at the 2008 Engineering Conference - Innovation Good Practice and Research in Engineering Education.
The health and safety agenda is becoming increasingly important in engineering education as employers expect graduate engineers to be risk aware and have an appreciation of their professional responsibility for their own safety and the safety of others. Active experiential learning methods in the form of roleplay in reallife scenarios engage students to consider the wider implications of their activities as professional engineers in society. To this end a reallife accident investigation has been developed into a virtual laboratory exercise for year 1 engineering students. In this lab students take on the role of the accident investigation team sorting through information and analysing evidence in support of an expert witness statement.
The exercise encourages team working and communication and is accepted as an important element of the student’s active learning experience in safety risk issues. The lab serves to emphasise that human factors have a large part to play in the underlying cause of accidents. Elements of risk education are embedded in the exercise: professional responsibilities for managing risk risk considerations for design hazard identification underlying causes of accidents and linking accident investigation with risk assessment. A reconstruction of the scene is created with a 1/100 th scale model that was used in the actual court prosecution and a file of data is provided comprising photographs witness statements and other technical documents mainly taken from the accident investigation report. Future developments will explore the use of virtual 3D software to recreate a walkthrough of the accident scene with interactive elements.
