Development of fire safety behavioral skills via virtual reality

Abstract

In recent years, virtual reality has become prevalent in many educational settings. In this study, virtual reality-based behavioral skills training (VR-BST) approach is proposed to teach basic behavioral skills for fire safety. A virtual reality-based environment was designed and implemented in the context of the design-based research. A group of ten primary school students received a basic fire safety training package through this environment and in situ training was implemented when needed. The results indicated that students’ fire safety behavioral skills significantly improved with the use of virtual reality based training and the majority of the students could transfer their behavioral skills to real environments. The way of modelling the behaviors in this study and integrating in situ training into the learning environment positively contributed to the development of behavioral skills. The study concludes with suggestions for practitioners and researchers in the field of virtual reality for behavioral skills training.