In Tampere, the 3rd biggest city in Finland, the local taxi company has taken up a mobile platform, Seppo, to train their new drivers. The onboarding game contains exercises that appear on a GPS live map. The driver completes the game tasks using his smartphone. The game helps drivers become familiar with local businesses and landmarks and some exercises require taking photos on the spot.
The taxi industry has gone through great changes in Finland and there is growing pressure to train new drivers efficiently. Tiina Kansikas, the training manager at the taxi company, has previously worked as a teacher which helped her take a pedagogical approach to the new staff training. She hadn’t used the Seppo platform before but says creating the game was very easy.
– With Seppo the new driver can do the training independently but still get support and learn in a structured manner.
The game she created has dozens of exercises that the driver can complete over several days. This makes learning more efficient. The Seppo game activates the learner and encourages the new driver to proactively seek information.
Some of the tasks include finding for example a specific hospital, pharmacy or sports center in a certain part of the city. Other exercises give more freedom to the driver allowing them to choose for example three different restaurants in a certain area and taking a selfie in front each one. Experiencing the new locations first hand makes the information stick better.
The drivers felt positive about the new way of learning:
– The game was super useful and very practical! It definitely helped me pass the local places test afterwards, one of the freshly graduated taxi drivers explains.