The Health and Safety Council (HASC) is a non-profit contractor association that trains contractors in safety and skills tasks needed for working in petrochemical and oil refining facilities.
Due to the large number of contractors who work on these sites, the most cost-effective and efficient method of providing this training has been computer-based training (CBT).
HASC is researching the effectiveness of virtual reality (VR) as a tool to augment these CBTs to make CBTs more effective since finding more effective, engaging ways to utilize CBT training falls within HASC's mission (Health and Safety Council, 2006). As a part of this innovation, HASC is working to make the VR training more effective though the use of emotional videos.
In 2020, HASC developed a CBT that included VR exercises and studied the efficacy of VR exercises by comparing tests between a control group and an experimental group. The control group was provided a standard CBT with knowledge checks and tests. The experimental group had the same content as the control group but was allowed to take VR exercises to reinforce learning objectives. The analysis of this 2020 study showed that CBT courses augmented with VR exercises provided more resilient long-term memory formation than those without VR exercises (Health and Safety Council, 2020).
HASC has released another CBT course with VR exercises that includes job-relevant videos with an emotionally compelling storyline. These are taken in the fully immersive VR headset along with the exercises. The intent of this new CBT is to determine what effects VR exercises with emotionally compelling videos might have on learners' understanding of the training concepts and the gravity of the procedures the training covers. Other studies such as Tyng et al. (2017) and Diemer et al. (2015), have found links between emotion and long-term memory formation and HASC intends to provide greater learner long-term memory formation using emotion as well as VR.
Rationale for the Study
HASC has developed a CBT course with VR exercises with emotionally compelling videos to try and increase long-term memory retention for the learners who take the course. This has been demonstrated in other studies where emotions are elicited via video and VR exercises (Marín-Morales et al., 2018, and Diemer et al., 2015). HASC hopes that videos showing interviews with affected family members and friends will create a sympathetic, emotionally resonant episode for learners that will increase the chances of retaining and recalling information later. When considering memories of our past, Holland and Kensinger (2010) write that "the past we recall often consists primarily of moments imbued with emotions" (p. 7). Additionally, Holland and Kensinger (2010) note that experiences that are more relevant and personal will likely be remembered more than those that have less relevance.
HASC deliberately excluded any analytical video analysis or emotions that might be perceived as negative when developing these videos. As Knorzer et al. (2016) write, more positive emotions in learning are a facilitator of knowledge and help learners enhance memory. In their investigation of Cognitive-Affective Theory of Learning with Media (CATLM), they researched whether positive emotions before learning increased memory and instead found that although "learner's emotional state had a crucial impact on learning outcomes: Learners with a negative emotional state before learning outperformed learners with a positive emotional state" (Knorzer et al., 2016, p. 627). Therefore, rather than focusing on positive or negative emotional states per se, HASC's study will focus on feelings such as empathy, compassion, sympathy, and pity. Also, unlike the Knorzer et al. (2016) analysis, the emotionally resonant videos are played after the VR exercises and summarize the procedure rather than being shown before the learning. Another rationale for providing memories that are sympathetic rather than negative comes from a study on emotional memory and event memory by Kuriyama et al. (2010). The authors found through their study that in terms of episodic memory, "the more fearsome the event, the more likely it is to be inaccurately recognized" (p. 133) despite findings in other studies that seem to show event memory being strong when strong emotions are present, especially fear.
Unlike Knorzer et al. (2016), Zlomuzica et al. (2016) found that through their experiments on providing emotional resonance through short videos and their effect on episodic memory, the impact of positive and anxious emotional states had no change on episodic memory retention. Zlomuzica et al. (2016) found "an inverse correlation between the level of negative arousal and performance scores in memory for spatial context" (p. 185). The final results from Zlomuzica et al. (2016) found that emotional arousal of the test subject before the learning had a more negligible effect on episodic memory but may "hamper the memory for the event-location association." As stated previously, unlike Zlomuzica et al. (2016), HASC hopes to stimulate emotional arousal after the learning and the training, rather than prior.
Knorzer et al. (2015) also conducted experiments regarding prior knowledge and how prior knowledge might affect cognitive load and memory. Learner's "with high working memory capacity perceive complex learning materials as less difficult and can compensate additionally imposed (extraneous) cognitive load" (Knorzer et al., 2015, p. 620), and a "higher working memory capacity has also been found to be a significant predictor for learning success in multimedia learning" (Knorzer et al., 2015, p. 620).
Many of the studies have been conducted using subjects who are not a part of the industrial field workforce that HASC supports. HASC works with field workers, leaders, and contractors who work around hazards on a daily basis that could cause serious injury to themselves, their colleagues, or environmental hazards for the communities (Oil and gas extraction - hazards, n.d.). Although there are several studies on industrial workers and VR training efficacy (Gavish et al., 2015 and Vasilevski & Birt, 2020 and Colombo et al., 2014), there is a gap in the research of how VR and training that elicits emotion can encourage these workers to perform their work more safely.
Research Purpose
The purpose of this research is to determine how emotionally compelling videos affect the learner's understanding of the concepts of the CBT VR training. There is evidence from HASC's 2020 VR study (Health and Safety Council, 2020) that there is an increase in long-term memory formation when VR exercises are added to traditional CBT. There is little research that combines emotion, VR, and micro-learning exercises of this kind for the contracting community that HASC supports. The videos that have been created as a part of this experiment show learners an interview with family members of industrial workers who were critically injured or killed in real-world accidents using the same procedures as those the learners are trained on in the CBT course. As stated in other studies like Knorzer et al. (2015) and Zlomuzica et al. (2016), there is a link between creating resilient episodic memory and the learner's emotional state. Since the videos are directly relevant to the work procedures in the training course, there should be direct relevance for the learner, which like Holland and Kensinger (2010) find, provides for more resilient memory formation for the learner. Additionally, many HASC learners are contractors who have taken multiple courses at the council over many years. In many cases, these are redundant training courses and they reinforce classes that the contractor learner may have taken many times. As Knorzer et al. (2015) found regarding prior knowledge affecting cognitive load and memory, this prior knowledge should lead to greater long-term memory development as learners will be less overly taxed. Finally, since there is a relationship between positive and negative emotions on learner memory, rather than focusing on positive or negative emotional states, HASC will focus on feelings such as empathy, compassion, sympathy, and pity to arouse emotion in the learner.
Research Questions
The research questions HASC hopes to answer include:
• How do the learners who take the CBT courses with VR exercises describe the training course and concepts within them?
• What impact do the learners believe the VR and videos will have on their desire to follow procedures outlined in the course when they are in the field?
• How do the learners discuss the impact of the VR and videos compared to other training they have taken?
Definition of Key Terms/Constructs
CBT The acronym for Computer Based Training, the generic delivery process of providing training through a computer terminal.
Contractor Workers, primarily field workers, who work on behalf of refinery and petrochemical facility owners. The predominant learning audience at HASC.
Episodic Memory A part of declarative memory that is focused on the specific, unique events around personal experiences (Schöne et al., 2019).
HASC The common name/acronym for the Health and Safety Council. A non-profit operating in Pasadena, Texas since 1990 that trains contractors primarily within the petrochemical and oil and refinery industry to provide safety and skills training.
Long-Term Memory Learning or recollection of events that are stored over an extended period of time.
VR The acronym for Virtual Reality, 3D, immersive technology that provides interactive simulations for the learner.
References
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Diemer, J., Alpers, G. W., Peperkorn, H. M., Shiban, Y., & Mühlberger, A. (2015). The impact of perception and presence on emotional reactions: a review of research in virtual reality. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 26.
Gavish, N., Gutiérrez, T., Webel, S., Rodríguez, J., Peveri, M., Bockholt, U., & Tecchia, F. (2015). Evaluating virtual reality and augmented reality training for industrial maintenance and assembly tasks. Interactive Learning Environments, 23(6), 778–798.
Health and Safety Council. (2006). Vision and Mission Statements. https://www.hasc.com/about-hasc/vision-mission/
Health and Safety Council. (2020). Gauging Effectiveness of 3D VR for Memory Retrieval. Retrieved October 10, 2021, from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jvogEWVVL7BLQSZ08bab9S1RGS-llAwN/view?usp=sharing
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Knörzer, L., Brünken, R., & Park, B. (2016). Emotions and multimedia learning: the moderating role of learner characteristics: Emotions in multimedia learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 32(6), 618–631.
Kuriyama, K., Soshi, T., Fujii, T., & Kim, Y. (2010). Emotional memory persists longer than event memory. Learning & Memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 17(3), 130–133.
Marín-Morales, J., Higuera-Trujillo, J. L., Greco, A., Guixeres, J., Llinares, C., Scilingo, E. P., Alcañiz, M., & Valenza, G. (2018). Affective computing in virtual reality: emotion recognition from brain and heartbeat dynamics using wearable sensors. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 13657.
Oil and gas extraction - hazards. (n.d.). Osha.Gov. Retrieved October 9, 2021, from https://www.osha.gov/oil-and-gas-extraction/hazards
Schöne, B., Wessels, M., & Gruber, T. (2019). Experiences in virtual reality: A window to autobiographical memory. Current Psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.), 38(3), 715–719.
Tyng, C. M., Amin, H. U., Saad, M. N. M., & Malik, A. S. (2017). The influences of emotion on learning and memory. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1454.
Vasilevski, N., & Birt, J. (2020). Analysing construction student experiences of mobile mixed reality enhanced learning in virtual and augmented reality environments. Research in Learning Technology, 28(0). https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v28.2329
Zlomuzica, A., Preusser, F., Totzeck, C., Dere, E., & Margraf, J. (2016). The impact of different emotional states on the memory for what, where and when features of specific events. Behavioural Brain Research, 298(Pt B), 181–187.
