Memories begin to fade immediately. Even with training that is well developed and delivered, the objectives are forgotten due in part to what is known as the "forgetting curve." Proposed by Hermann Ebbinghaus over 100 years ago, the forgetting curve suggests that memories do not fade in a modest, slow straight line, but rather as a quickly descending curve.
Users engaged in the Health and Safety Council’s virtual reality training exercises.
At the Health and Safety Council (HASC), we work to design and develop training to overcome the tendencies of the forgetting curve. When we develop training, we identify learning objectives to help learners remember the essential concepts and reinforce those objectives through various knowledge checks throughout the course. HASC's team uses a "scaffolding" technique to develop training, allowing the learner to build on previously acquired knowledge. We strive to find ways to interact with learners while they are training and when they leave our campus. All of this is designed to delay the forgetting that immediately occurs without intentional intervention and develop long-term memories for the learner.
HASC’s VR exercises encourage the learner to use spatial cognition, embodied cognition and sensorimotor memory cells.
Semantic memory, the ability to recall words, concepts or numbers, and episodic memory, the ability to remember an event, are the two types of memory that safety and skills trainers at HASC attempt to reinforce for our learners. Employees in the industries HASC supports are put into situations where they must be able to recall procedures and processes, especially in distress, to ensure against personal injury, catastrophic damage to equipment, or hazardous releases of chemicals and vapors. Although semantic memory is valuable, particularly in terms of the types of equipment, tools or specifications for a job, episodic memory is more critical in emergencies.
An example of what users see when engaged in the Health and Safety Council’s virtual reality training exercises.
Virtual reality (VR) is a tool that HASC has started to use to help delay the effects of the forgetting curve. How can HASC's VR exercises provide better, longer-lasting memories of training events for their learners? Multiple trace memory theory is the idea that memories that have more branches and are more vibrant when they are created have a better chance of being accessed correctly in the future. Additionally, memories become stronger the more times they are accessed. HASC's VR exercises encourage the learner to use spatial cognition, embodied cognition and sensorimotor memory cells throughout the training, all of which have been shown to create more memory traces. Using VR training exercises, HASC hopes to build stronger, more resilient, long-term memories that can be accessed more readily and accurately by the learner when they are on the job.
A 2018 study titled "Virtual Memory Palaces: Immersion Aids Recall" demonstrated that there was improved memory in VR compared with traditional computer-based training. Another study published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers titled "Immersive Virtual Reality for Training and Decision Making: Preliminary Results of Experiments Performed with a Plant Simulator" proved that learners trained in a VR environment were more capable of identifying valves than their non-VR-trained colleagues, and they were faster to mitigate spills and leaks. Additionally, Walmart has used VR training on a national scale to reduce training time and improve training effectiveness for its employees.
HASC hopes to build stronger, more resilient, long-term memories that can be accessed readily and accurately.
In the six months since HASC launched its first VR course for Fire Watch (19FIREVR), over 2,000 learners have taken the course and benefited from the VR exercises. As demonstrated in HASC's white paper, "Gauging Effectiveness of 3-D Virtual Reality for Memory Retrieval," the VR exercises have been shown to provide more resilient long-term memory development compared to those learners who did not take the training with VR exercises.
The 19FIREVR Fire Watch training course is just the first of several courses with VR exercises that HASC intends to develop and study. Interest in developing VR exercises for safety and skills training is growing in every industry at a rapid pace. The benefits of including VR exercises to build more resilient memories for the learners and undermine the effects of the forgetting curve show the effectiveness of VR as a tool for the workforce.
The Health and Safety Council (HASC), formerly the Houston Area Safety Council, is a 501c3 nonprofit association headquartered in Houston serving owner sites and contractors in the petrochemical industry across the nation and around the world through training, occupational health and integrated solutions. HASC's services are available on-campus, on-site and online, when and where your company needs us.
For more information, visit their website or call (888) 955-SAFE [7233].
