Transferring knowledge through only a classroom lesson is often not enough to prevent risky behavior. By experiencing it, information sticks better, previous research shows. In the Risk Factory, an experience center in Venlo, students experience realistic and interactive scenarios about health and safety risks. By experiencing potentially dangerous situations in a simulated environment, they learn how to act: from cybercrime to blind spots and fire risks.
Experiential learning
In Britain and Japan, among others, these kinds of experience centers are already common in education, and in recent years they have been on the rise in the Netherlands as well. “An experience center is seen by the target group as a fun place to learn, but whether a visit actually leads to behavioral change was still unclear,” says social psychologist Rob Holland, one of the team members of the doctoral research. This prompted the Radboud scientists to investigate the effect of experiential learning on health and safety behaviors. 'Now we saw: this vivid learning experience makes them more likely to be able to apply the knowledge they have gained. This leads to less risky behavior, even in other situations.'
Do you just leave your data behind?
The research was commissioned by the Province of Limburg. Pupils from group 8 of sixteen elementary school in North and Central Limburg visited the Risk Factory. A few weeks later a researcher joined them in class and took questionnaires and had them do assignments that did not refer to their visit to the Risk Factory. This allowed the students' health and safety behaviors to be tested. The research included behaviors around privacy, risky requests and health.
For example, in a section of the Risk Factory the children learned about privacy; that when creating an account it is better not to share more personal information than strictly necessary. In the later survey, students were also asked to share information. Some fields were mandatory (with *), but there were also non-compulsory fields, such as age, phone number or profile picture. “In this, we really saw a big difference between the 16 classes that went into the Risk Factory and the remaining 13 classes that didn't,” Holland says. Of the latter group, 92% filled in all personal information, while in the groups that had visited the Risk Factory, only 45% of students filled in all fields.
Experiential learning works
'The results show that experiential learning works,' the researcher continues. 'That is very interesting for schools and other institutions that want to teach children about risk. If you let students experience early what they can do in dangerous situations, it prevents a lot of problems later in life.'