Enhancing risk assessment skills in hazardous environments: Priming with a serious game approach

Occupational risk assessments, critical for identifying hazards such as noise, radiation, and air quality, are challenging due to their complex and often invisible nature. In response, we developed AssessVR, a serious game-based simulation tool, designed to enhance risk assessment skills among students and safety professionals. This study included twenty-seven students from three US universities, all of whom had completed a module on Occupational Hearing Loss and risk assessment in an Industrial Hygiene course. These students were assigned to either the Utilitarian or Gamified version of AssessVR for a risk assessment case study. The results indicated that students using the Gamified version of AssessVR tended to perform better in specific risk assessment areas, such as Exposure Assessment and Reference to Exposure Standards. However, this improvement was not uniform across all evaluation metrics. These findings suggest that while AssessVR, particularly its Gamified form, has potential in risk assessment skill acquisition, its effectiveness varies across different assessment areas. This underscores the need for further research and development in serious game-based simulations to optimize their role in enhancing occupational hazards management competencies.