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This paper describes the development of a digital role play game (RPG) designed to help construction apprentices to better communicate with their supervisors about issues with the potential to impact on their physical and psychological health and safety.

A participatory approach was adopted to utilise the knowledge and insights of the target users to inform the digital RPG development. Apprentices and supervisors were interviewed to identify characteristics of effective supervisor-apprentice communication, which became the RPG’s learning objectives. The scenarios constructed in the RPG were drawn from lived experiences shared by the apprentices in the interviews. During the development process, consultations were conducted with an advisory committee comprising of apprentices and supervisors to improve the realism of the RPG scenarios.

Three scenarios were developed for the RPG. In each scenario, players are asked to make decisions at various interaction points about how the characters should respond to the unfolding and challenging situations. Scripts were developed for the game, which were acted out and motion captured to animate digital MetaHuman characters embedded in a virtual construction site. Two example situations are introduced in this paper to illustrate the development process.

To our knowledge, the RPG introduced is one of the first applications of digital game-based training in the construction industry. The adoption of a participatory design approach ensures that the game content relates to real-world experiences. The digital RPG is highly interactive and engaging in nature and presents a novel approach to developing “soft” skills in construction.

The ability to measure cognitive load in the workplace provides several opportunities to improve workplace learning. In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has seen an increase in use for training and learning applications due to improvements in technology and reduced costs. This study aims to focus on the use of simulation task load index (SIM-TLX), a recently developed self-reported measure of cognitive load for virtual environments to measure cognitive load while undertaking tasks in different environments.

The authors conducted a within-subject design experiment involving 14 participants engaged in digit-recall n-back tasks (1-back and 2-back) in two VR environments: a neutral grey environment and a realistic industrial ozone facility. Cognitive load was then assessed using the SIM-TLX.

The findings revealed higher task difficulty for the 2-back task due to higher mental demand. Furthermore, a notable interaction emerged between cognitive load and different virtual environments.

This study relied solely on an n-back task and SIM-TLX self-report measure to assess cognitive load. Future studies should consider including ecologically valid tasks and physiological measurement tools such as eye-tracking to measure cognitive load.

Identifying cognitive workload sources during VR tasks, especially in complex work environments, is considered beneficial to the application of VR training aimed at improving workplace learning.

This study provides unique insights into measuring cognitive load from various sources as defined by the SIM-TLX sub-scales to investigate the impact of simulated workplace environments.