Mainstreaming occupational safety and health into university ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Mainstreaming occupational safety and health into university educationE u r o p e a n Ag e n c y f o r Sa f e t y a n d He a l t h a t Wo r kO O Curriculum: Psychology, B.Sc. (in co-operation with Roland Eötvös University,Budapest, Faculty of Psychology)Subject: Safety at work (2 ECTS credits)Character: CompulsoryThe subject ‘Safety at work’ for psychology students emphasises the psychological(cognitive, attention-related or emotional) background mechanisms of human errorthat have to be taken into account in designing safe products. The target group ofthis subject are psychology students in the Roland Eötvös University, Budapest.OO Curriculum: Master of Business Administration, MBAModule: Safety culture in companies (integrated within psychology lectures)Character: CompulsoryThis module aims at raising the awareness of students of business administration tothe advantages, possibilities and measures related to companies’ ethics and safetyculture. It is embedded into the general psychology classes of the MBA curriculum.It is not a full module, being only a two-hour block integrated into the ‘Psychology’subject although it is compulsory.OO Curricula: Engineering Studies, B.Sc. (various)Subject: Ergonomics (2 ECTS credits)Character: OptionalClasses in ergonomics are offered to students from various engineering studycourses. The teaching provides a broad overview of ergonomics in general. Safetyaspects, such as risk assessment, office environment evaluation, industrial workplaceassessment, and human-computer interaction are just some of the topics included.Even though the subject is elective only, it is quite popular among student engineers.Over a thousand students (out of about 10.000 students) chose ergonomics in termautumn / winter 2007.Embedding safety classes into compulsory subjects helps to make studentsappreciate safety aspects at work. The popularity of the elective classes in ergonomicsshows that students are interested in workplace and machine-design aspects. Somealso chose safety issues for their diploma thesis: this one-year project allows them toexplore their chosen subject in greater depthAnalysis of real eventsThroughout the last ten years the departmental head and his colleagues havecollected a number of event analyses and redesign concepts that they use forteaching purposes: During the ‘product safety’ lectures – and from the materials puton the university website - the students are provided with several different eventanalyses and redesign concepts. These include event trees and fault trees, humanreliability analysis, survival analysis, control chart method, reliability and error ratefunctions. For ICT products specifically: cognitive walkthrough, heuristic assessment,GOMS analysis, design guideline review, empirical usability testing, etc. Each studenthas his/her own ‘event analysis and redesign’ task, which is usually based on a minorreal incident/accident – or near miss – which actually happened to him/her whileinteracting with a simple consumer product (such as a gas/electric cooker, microwaveoven, electric toaster, sewing machine, lawnmower, chainsaw, hair drier, deep fat fryer,etc.). The students have to:OO reconstruct the chain of elementary events (first without any interpretation, simplyto list pure facts) and identify the consequences;132
Mainstreaming occupational safety and health into university educationOOOOestablish reasonable possible causal relationships based on a carefully selectedmethod (for example, fault trees), to identify root causes and immediate causes andthe related PSF (Performance Shaping Factors) if possible; andcarry out an effective redesign that would prevent this or a similar types ofincident/accident from occurring in the future.The learning and development outcomes that the students achieve include:OO correct choice of analysis methods;OO ability to conduct an in-depth analysis;OO correct identification of root causes of problems (both technical or human/behavioural); andOO making a redesign of a high technical quality.E u r o p e a n Ag e n c y f o r Sa f e t y a n d He a l t h a t Wo r kProblems facedProblems included:OO The time available is too short to cover all relevant topics related to ergonomicsand psycho-social factors.OO 2 ECTS credits per subject is equal to two hours of lectures per week which meansthat professors have to concentrate on core areas.Success factorsSuccess factors of the teaching methods include:OO use of real-life case studies and students’ own experiences; andOO focus on skills development not simply on theoretical learning.Success factors for achieving OSH teaching in these courses include:OO having OSH experts that can provide the teaching based within the university;OO with regard to the teaching in the MBA, the close proximity of the departmentwith the OSH expertise to the department providing the MBA, and the existenceof teaching links. Firstly, they are both in the same faculty. Secondly, psychologyis part of the MBA course, and as the OSH expertise is within the ergonomicsand psychology department it is straightforward to include OSH as a part of thepsychology teaching; andOO students receiving credits for the courses.TransferabilityThis case includes a compulsory course which has OSH elements incorporated intoan MBA programme. Business studies courses are probably the greatest challengefor mainstreaming OSH into university education. This case shows that it can beachieved. No doubt the close relationship described above between the departmentproviding the OSH teaching and the department providing the MBA course facilitatedthis process.133
Page 1:
European Agency for Safety and Heal
Page 4 and 5:
Editor and Project Manager:Sarah Co
Page 6 and 7:
Mainstreaming occupational safety a
Page 8 and 9:
Page 10 and 11:
Page 12 and 13:
Page 14 and 15:
Page 16 and 17:
Page 18 and 19:
Page 20 and 21:
Page 23 and 24:
European Agency for Safety and Heal
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29:
Page 32 and 33:
Page 34 and 35:
Page 36 and 37:
Page 38 and 39:
Page 40 and 41:
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
Page 46 and 47:
Page 48 and 49:
Page 50 and 51:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78:
Page 79 and 80:
Page 81 and 82:
Page 83 and 84: Mainstreaming occupational safety a
Page 133: Mainstreaming occupational safety a
Page 137 and 138: European Agency for Safety and Heal
Page 149 and 150: European Agency for Safety and Heal
Page 173: Mainstreaming occupational safety a
Page 176: TE-WE-09-007-EN-CIn order to improv
show all

Mainstreaming occupational safety and health into university ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?