Brisbane-based List Premier Education has been developing and distributing touch board education tools for training in mine safety for just shy of a decade, tailoring the software for audiences in regions such as China, Indonesia and South Africa.

Using a whiteboard that is made interactive through a video projector system and a computer, workers undergoing training are able to engage with graphics and videos projected on the white board, broadening the number of educational inputs used, as opposed to traditional methods of teaching.

According to the company, educational inputs utilised by the teaching technique include visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, reinforcement and communication.

“The traditional way of training industry workers is usually with registered training organisations and it’s usually an oral type of presentation or a power point presentation,” List Premier executive chairman Dr Johann DeBeer told Australia’s Mining Monthly.

“It creates a big problem with non-English speaking people or people in China or Indonesia, for example, where the language ability is not on that high a level. 

“We develop this interactive software where the curriculum is based on [the client’s] training requirements and it’s a full on program with graphics and video and including a lot of questions and interaction where the workers can go to the touchboard and interact with the images.”

According to DeBeer, the interactive learning experience leads to a massive jump in information retention rates from 8% using traditional methods to 95% using the touch board technology.

“The reason for that is the constant reinforcement of knowledge and the visuals, which make things very basic and simple to understand,” he said.

DeBeer accepted the company’s recent award from the Chinese State Administrations for Foreign Affairs and Work Safety at the North China Institute for Science and Technology in Beijing.

The award recognised the company’s contribution to mine safety, covering areas such as visual safety, trade skills development, and scenarios applicable to both underground and open pit mining.

“Specific subjects range from risk management, emergency response and first aid, to fire fighting and prevention, managing hazards and mobile equipment and traffic,” DeBeer said.

The touch board software is designed to ingrain safety training into an organisation, saving on outsourcing the work to third parties, as the client is trained to deliver the material in the software.

The product has earned List Premier work with miners and governments alike.

“We deal a lot with governments and we go through a tender process,” DeBeer said.

“In Indonesia, for example, we have won several tenders already from the government and they use our programs in the coal mine industry where it forms a great part of the methodology that they use.

“They train thousands of mine workers every year using our training concept.

“It’s a long process going through the development of the curriculum and when we do a program there’s a lot of video, graphics and interactive animation involved.

“But at the end of the day we create a situation where we put the training in their control.”