AUGMENTED REALITY FOR SAFETY TRAINING: EVIDENCE FROM A REAL CASE

Augmented reality (AR) refers to an interactive experience of a real-world environment whose elements are "augmented" by computer-generated perceptual information (Wu et al., 2013). The main value of AR is that it brings components of the digital world into a person's perception of the real world, and does so not as a simple display of data, but through the integration of immersive sensations that are perceived as natural parts of an environment. New possibilities for teaching and learning provided by AR have been increasingly recognized by educational researchers, as well as by people interested in searching for effective ways to educate firms’ employees on a wide variety of topics (e.g. Klopfer & Squire, 2008; Bronack, 2011; Gavish et al., 2015). Through AR solutions, learners can be involved in phenomena that is not possible in the real world, visualize complex spatial relationships and abstract concepts, interact with two- and three dimensional objects in such mixed reality, and develop important practices and literacies that cannot be developed and enacted in other technology-enhanced learning environments (Klopfer & Squire, 2008; Bronack, 2011; Wu et al., 2013; Gavish et al., 2015). Our objective is to explore the effectiveness of AR for safety training. To do this, we have created a technological solution based on a combination of hardware and software technologies that will be presented in the manuscript.