Developing eLearning for the Fire Service

Developing eLearning for the Fire Service

For the past seven years I have been involved with the development of eLearning at IFSI and the University of Illinois. Early on, while developing the Online Firefighter II Course, a Captain of the Lake in the Hills Fire District asked me if online learning would really work in the fire service. My answer: “I really don’t know.” Now, I have no doubt that
it does really work.
Word is out and training officers of fire departments are more interested in including
eLearning and technology in their training programs. Nearly every day I get a call from a
fire department asking how they can develop and deliver eLearning.
In the next several issues of the IFSI newsletter I will cover “A” process for utilizing
eLearning at your department. I say “A” because there many ways you can use technology in training. I happen to feel that for the cost, my process provides a good place
to start if you choose to introduce eLearning into your department. Since the newsletter
is published only twice a year, I have established a Fire Service eLearning Blog so we
all have a place to meet and I can provide more of what I have learned.

eLearning: Where to Start
First, ask yourself what you want to accomplish with eLearning. Next, what hardware and software do you currently have? I ask those two questions on every call and the answer I typically get to the first question, “I need to conduct training without bringing all companies to one location, and I really want to standardize what our firefighters are taught.”
That answer makes perfect sense to me. In many cases, fire departments have several
fire stations and shifts. Whether the department is volunteer, paid-on-call, or career, it is very difficult to bring all firefighters together with the training officer at one time. So that means you have to have several training sessions on the same topic with an array of instructors. While I am a strong proponent of officers training their companies, I believe that if you want to provide standardized training on a skill it must be taught the same way to all your firefighters. There is little doubt that if you take three people, you will get three different deliveries of the same training. With that thought in mind, I will share my idea for standardization and your introduction into eLearning.

Video and CD / DVD Development
You might think this an odd place to start your eLearning development, but to me it makes perfect sense. As I said, the second question I ask is what hardware and software do you currently have? I find that most fire departments or training officers have a newer computer and a video camera. If they don’t have a video camera, someone on the department does. In essence you have everything you need to get stared.
Let’s dive a little deeper. Most computers purchased in the last three years have CD/ DVD burners. Video editing is very common. Microsoft provides “Windows Movie Maker.” This is a relatively simple point, click and drop video editing system. If you wish, you can purchase a product like Pinnacle Studio for around $100 and have a pretty powerful video editing tool.
So now you have a computer that can burn your CD /DVD’s and a camera and video editing equipment -- all the tools you’ll need. You can create videos of your training; burn them to CD or DVD. Once you distribute them to all fire stations, you as the training officer can be in more than one place teaching standardized training to your entire fire department. The company officer delivers your training, and takes the company out to practice what they have been taught. Just think of it, training on those new air packs for the entire fire department done at minimal of cost.

Why not Develop for the Web?
The answer is short and sweet. You must have more hardware, or access to a server, and software. The learning curve on web-based eLearning is much greater.

Organizing and Starting your Project
While I tried to make this process sound easy, with a little practice you can develop a respectable product. There is much more that goes into development. One of the most important aspects is storyboarding and content development. I will continue the blog with aspects of that topic next.