I am planning to teach OSH to management students for the first time. I have had much experience teaching this field to technical students (engineering students, operators, etc.) and I am thinking about how (or if) I should alter the approach I use and the material I seek to convey. I would appreciate any suggestions and sharing of lived experiences relevant to this question.
My feeling is that only your very first sentence will differ: "OSH is important for people" compared with "OSH is important for the bottom line of your company". Then continue as usual, remembering that learning the content of your course is less important than changing attitudes.
And help yourself to a copy of our paper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253327305_Working_Together_for_a_Collective_Culture_of_Construction_Safety
Conference Paper Working Together for a Collective Culture of Construction Safety
I would expect you will need to put much more emphasis to explaining why OSH is important at all. Also what can happen would need to be explained with much higher sensitivity. Some things that are self evident to engineering/technology students or professionals will be difficult to explain to social sciences students. I would try with much more examples at the beginning.
The venues that the students will occupy in their professional lives will differ, and as David has hinted, your examples will need to be different. Since the occupations are different, the hazards are different.
Thank you for your responses thus far. Many Social Sciences students major in Human Resource Management and are often taught that they hold responsibility for OSH. Therefore, I believe that they need to understand hazards, risk management, safe acts, safe conditions, and the hierarchy of control, just to name a few popular concerns. I plan to use many youtube videos as well as cases and pictures where students must spot the hazards and discuss mitigation options. Do you have any suggestions for good sources where I can purchase safety training videos that would be useful for in-class use?
Try resources such as National Occupation and Safety Associations. Also ask about posters. Usually such stuff is free (and good!).
Also get the students to inspect the university and write a report for top management. My reporting resulted in an overhaul of firefighting equipment and fire alarms.
I would start by reviewing syllabi from instructors who have taught the class. If you do a search for "occupational health administration syllabus" you should find some like these:
health.usf.edu/publichealth/pdf/course_syllabi/samples/PHC6360.pdf
http://www.hhs.iup.edu/lhrhodes/101_syllabus.htm
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