We've had three very productive days at Newport campus. Justin, Jason (who has been able to join us for the full three days) and Mark have been brainstorming, with input from Craig, James and me, their ideas for developing the virtual world activities and assessment for the three competencies we're targeting for the Cert II Pre-apps:
- VBQM697: Workplace Safety and Industry Induction
- VBQM698: Workplace Procedures for Environmental Sustainability
- VBQM708: Workplace Documents and Plans
This is where we've got to:
- we will take a hybrid, 'mix and match' virtual world and paper-based approach to these competencies
- activities will be delivered to students in their first couple of weeks at VU. They will have largely arrived straight from school etc with little introduction to the construction industry or its practices. So this will form a kind of introduction to how things work in the industry.
- all three units will be integrated into one in-world sequence of activities supplemented by one paper-based workbook covering all three units. Students will use the workbook to progress through (as before) - but particular sections will refer students to the virtual world to undertake specific activities and assessments, which will cover some but not all aspects of the units' learning objects (ie those aspects where the virtual world can add value to the learning and be relevant to the learning outcomes). This currently already happens in the Sustainability unit where students are referred to the online EPA Carbon Footprint calculator.
- the rationale here is for students to become familiar with what they will see in the real world including paper-based audits, safe work documents and building/site plans, yet benefit from the use of virtual in an integrated way (eg using paper-based audit documents to do safety audits of the virtual building site).
- Justin will spend the second week of his non-teaching time developing the resource workbook.
What the guys are working on now is the details of the activities. The story here is this:
- students arrive as builders' labourers
- they have to undertake an OH&S audit of the virtual building site to be promoted to supervisors
- once promoted, they enter the virtual building site office, complete an offline safe work statement, and are directed to their own empty site (each student has their own) as well as their paper site plans in the workbook
- they then go through a series of stages of setting up the site with OH&S and sustainability considerations as part of this (based on in-world multiple choice questions). This will end the OH&s and sustainability part of the exercise
- they then start 'building their house' on the site, which will involve the Workplace Documents and Plans unit - interpreting the 2D plans, orienting themselves, and understanding the symbols etc
Students will enter the world with 100 points that they have to keep. Every time they choose a wrong answer to a multiple choice question, they lose a point. This method is to ensure that they take care in considering answers (not just click at random until they get a right answer), which they can research through the information in their workbooks.
Above is a copy of the flowchart for the project todate, based on the brainstorming on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
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