Leanne Isaacson has been specialising in E Business Development/Online Learning for the past 5 yrs, Adult Education and Agriculture for past 20 years.
Leanne can inspire your business to grow using online meeting rooms! Visit her website, Inspiring Growth

Nominating yourself for the role of Fire Safety Warden at your new job may have seemed like an easy way to score brownie points with your new employer, but it’s important to realise the responsibility you need to take on in your new role. Of course all companies will be slightly different and numbers of employees will vary dramatically but effectively, you are responsible for the lives of your colleagues and will be the first point of call before the fire brigade arrive. Upon nomination, you will need to be put through some fire safety training by your company and so it’s essential you realise what is involved and what will be expected of you during your training programme.

The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order of 2005 was a statutory instrument, placing the onus on individuals to carry out risk assessments on certain types of property and submit them to their local fire authority. Under this order, fire safety training was made a legal requirement for staff members meaning fire marshals must learn certain skills in order to perform their role effectively. The focus will be on a wide range of procedures such as the chemistry of fire and how fires spreads, common causes of fire, safety features within buildings and what your action should be on discovering a fire. Fire Safety training will take you through the moment you need to call the fire service, how to spot and reduce hazards, evacuation procedures, liaising with the fire service, daily and weekly fire checks, record keeping and perhaps if appropriate to your particular company, you may look at dealing with bomb threats. All people learning to be a fire warden will most definitely learn the theory and practise behind using a fire extinguisher.

The purpose of this training will be to allow employees to fully assume the duties of Fire Marshals or Fire Wardens at their place of work and allow them to feel confident should their duties be required in an emergency.

While it sounds like a lot to learn, many fire safety training courses are able to cover all these key pointers within half a day, so you can easily squeeze it in to a normal working day. Upon completion, those who take part in the fire safety training will receive an IFE approved certificate of attendance (Institute of Fire Engineers). The IFE is at the heart of the fire community, and a recognised qualification from the institute will ensure you are well prepared in the heat of the moment.

Having the skills that will help you deal with a fire is also incredibly useful out of the workplace. Like learning how to do first aid, having the option to do fire safety training is incredibly rewarding. It’s strongly advisable to listen and learn and take on board all the fire services teach you. It could help to save a life.

Dominic Donaldson is an expert in the health & safety industry.
Find out more about Fire Safety Training and how important this training is for fire wardens at work.

In the wider commercial and government world eLearning, or online training, is often represented by an abundance of glorified Power Point presentations. Back and next buttons rule supreme, and while this type of training can provide some visually interesting content it doesn’t necessarily engage learners for long. However, if you’re prepared to spend more on eLearning a whole new teaching and learning opportunity is uncovered.

NBFS was a term I coined recently. Well it was a term I’d never heard before so I’ll stand by that claim albeit tentatively. It stands for Next Button Fatigue Syndrome and although at the time it was a joke I realised it did articulate a large concern related to eLearning.

In the wider commercial and government world online training is often represented by an abundance of glorified Power Point presentations. Back and next buttons rule supreme, and while this type of eLearning can provide some visually interesting content it doesn’t necessarily engage learners for long. Now, without demonising this further, I do agree that it has an important place in certain forms of online training. It is particularly useful for rapid eLearning where budgets are limited or content is restrictive in its capacity for instructional design. However, if you’re prepared to spend more a whole new teaching and learning opportunity is uncovered.

So what can be gained from increasing an eLearning budget? Perhaps the best way to expand on this is to look at the rise, and rise, and rise of computer gaming.

Computer gaming has captured a huge portion of the entertainment market by creating stories and environments that immerse the user, allowing them to freely explore, engage and choose their own fortunes. Unlike movies where the narrative is controlled and the exposure limited, computer gaming is far more absorbing for far longer.

If you take this concept of using stories, environments and user-control to immerse learners- or immersive eLearning as we refer to it- you’re somewhat closer to understanding where a more expansive budget can lead.

Take, for example, a large business that operates a syndicated gambling game throughout clubs and pubs. If we imagine that each staff member within each establishment is required to operate and understand a ticketing console that facilitates this syndicated game — and the associated customer service — it wouldn’t be stretching reality to suggest the learner population would be massive and very widely spread.

In this example, the learner base is 30,000 people spread across a region the size of France. Prior to considering online induction and online systems training, the business would spend time and money sending trainers to the far corners of the region. The cost for one such ‘training mission’ could quite literally translate into thousands of dollars of travel and accommodation costs — and even then not every trainee would necessarily be available for training at that particular time. Spread the cost, say $2000, over forty employees and you’re spending $50 on training per individual. Calculate that cost over an estimated 30,000 learners and it rises to an astronomical $1.5 million per annum.

This begs the question “what’s the eLearning alternative” for a business case like this? Well firstly, we considered the model that face-to-face training would have employed — lectures, training around the ticketing console and actual on the job training. Secondly, we considered the fact that face to face training was a limited resource that relies upon learners digesting content within a fixed time frame. Thirdly, we knew that eLearning training would be consistent and standardised across all learners, something that would be difficult to achieve under a face-to-face model.

The answer — enter the animated and interactive world of a fictitious club, full of helpful staff, trainers and eager customers wanting to play variations of the syndicated game and all with different questions, spending options and problems. Add to this a computer generated version of the ticketing console and the learner has the ability to actually partake in a fully functioning, yet fictitious, version of the club and game with multiple customer scenarios unfolding before them.

Sounds expensive? Well it is true effective eLearning doesn’t come cheaply. But let’s compare it to the original training costs. In this example the total cost of this project was in the vicinity of $250,000 — one sixth of the original face to face training costs. Furthermore, when we consider that this training will be suitable for at least three years the cost differential is even greater. Bundle this eLearning with an LMS, a Learning Management System, and every one of the 30,000 learners can be tracked and assessed on an equal footing.

While training of this calibre may not always be an organisation’s first thought, it’s certainly worth calculating the costs between differing training models. So don’t be afraid to consider spending in eLearning. If you choose the right provider, with demonstrated creative abilities, you may just find you’ve solved your training needs and helped to change the perception of eLearning.

Aframe provides comprehensive eLearning, learning content development, compliance training, and learning management system solutions across Asia Pacific.