Safety professionals working in manufacturing environments know that training requirements for manufacturing employees are high. OSHA requires over 150 types of training across all industries. Approximately 50 of these topics are generally applicable to most manufacturing environments. Additionally, approximately 30 of these topics must be delivered annually.
One way to keep things interesting for trainees, as well as the safety trainer, is to use interactive learning activities instead of or in addition to traditional classroom training. The idea of using interactive activities comes from the guiding principles of accelerated learning and have been shown to be a highly effective way to get and keep trainees attention as well as to increase retention of the training material presented.
The principles of accelerated learning have been presented at previous ASSE Professional Development Conferences and described in the corresponding Proceedings papers. The titles of these papers are included in this paper's bibliography. To briefly summarize, the principles of accelerated learning are:
Learning should involve the whole mind and body. Games and activities are a great way to get the trainee's mind and body involved for maximum participation.
Learning is not the passive storage of information but the active creation of knowledge
By working through an activity such as a game, the trainee is working to learn and make connections and not just being fed information. When this happens, the information is more meaningful and will be retained longer.
Good learning is social and we can learn much more by learning with our peers than we can by ourselves. Safety training games and activities, for the most part, are group activities. Even when the activity is a simple safety crossword puzzle, teams can work on the puzzle together to increase learning.
