Learning Beacons - Using the Internet of Things to Deliver Health and Safety Materials in Student Workshops

Abstract

Health and safety is an important part of student education within a wide range of both engineering and applied art fields. Until now, health and safety information for specific machinery was commonly held only as paper copies for student reference. The introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies mean that it is possible to provide highly-localised health and safety information as well as short instructional videos detailing the safe operation of workshop equipment using mobile technology.Each workshop has been equipped with a "learning beacon" -a Bluetooth Low Energy beacon that points mobile devices towards web pages. Students can download the Physical Web app on their mobile device and then use it to access the web page pointed to by the local beacon. The content can be easily updated using Google Sites and the university's own Sharepoint system, making it easy for teaching staff to maintain the content and to add and remove teaching materials as appropriate. Monitoring of the usage of the web pages showed that approximately 25% of the student cohort made use of this resource. This pilot project is a collaboration between the University of Wales Trinity St. David's School of Applied Computing and the School of Applied Art and Design.