2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The advancement of virtual reality (VR) technology offers a significant opportunity to enhance safety training in the construction industry. Despite significant advancements and numerous studies on the use of VR for safety training, its integration into Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) curricula remains limited. Furthermore, previous studies have not integrated pedagogical theory or offered practical solutions. To address these limitations, this study developed a VR-based serious game grounded in Bloom's Taxonomy and evaluated its acceptance among CEM students and industry professionals using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Quantitative data was collected from the VR training scenario that simulates concrete works for an actual university building project. The game was designed to engage trainees in identifying safety and health issues and solving quiz questions related to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations by navigating the virtual job site. Survey questionnaires were developed based on the TAM to assess trainee learning as it relates to perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use, attitude, and behavioral intention to use. We also gathered demographic data and information about participants’ prior experiences with university safety courses, OSHA safety training, virtual reality (VR), 3D modeling, computer-aided design (CAD) software, and 3D video games. A total of 64 university students and 41 industry professionals participated in the VR construction safety training experiment and completed the survey questionnaires. Data normalities were evaluated using the Shapiro–Wilk test. Through Mann-Whitney U Test, we found the mean of summed PU scores to be statistically significantly different between the student group and the industry professional group (P<0.05). The mean score of the industry group was lower than that of the student group. Further regression analysis was conducted to identify factors associated with PU among the professionals. It was found that participants in the industry group with no prior formal OSHA safety education or training and with lower engagement levels reported lower PU scores. Both the student and industry groups indicated that animation effects, followed by sound effects, were the most important factors to help trainees engage more in the VR safety training. These findings together suggested the importance of the animation and sound effects when developing VR-based serious games for safety training. In addition, VR safety training should be integrated into Bloom’s taxonomy framework and delivered alongside formal OSHA training, rather than being treated as a standalone instructional tool, particularly to support industry professionals’ PU of the training. The authors believe the findings of this study contribute to identifying key factors for the successful implementation of the VR construction safety training in the regular course curriculum.