When disaster strikes, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) technicians can be the difference between life and death. EMS professionals and volunteers alike undergo extensive training to ensure they’re up to the rigors of the job, and EMS trainers are always on the lookout for new ways to engage trainees and ensure learners understand and retain vital training information. Since EMS trainers typically serve two populations of learners, paid technicians as well as volunteers, they have to make sure their training methods are well suited to both groups.
A fire department lieutenant in charge of annual EMS training for a county fire department with over 1,000 employees and many more volunteers recently faced that dilemma. He and his team delivered training to classes that typically ranged in size from 15 to 50 participants per class. One issue he noticed was that the volunteers were less engaged during the sessions. Possibly due to a lack of confidence, volunteers were typically less likely to answer questions or become actively involved in classroom discussions.
The lieutenant attended a conference where the organizers used response technology to engage attendees and experienced first-hand how well it worked, so he implemented a similar strategy in his EMS training program. The new software enabled trainers to embed questions into PowerPoint slides used to prepare personnel for exams. Using clickers, students were able to submit their answers to questions that appeared on the screen, and aggregate results for the group would then be displayed on the slide in chart form.
This new approach had two immediate benefits. The first was that every student participated during the sessions. Instead of a handful of professional technicians answering questions the instructor posed while the rest of the class listened passively, every learner submitted an answer, which gave them more motivation to stay focused and think through each problem. Even students who never said a word in class became more engaged.
The second advantage was that the instructors received real-time data on how well students were understanding and retaining key concepts. Before integrating response technology, instructors had to rely on the small percentage of students who spoke up in class or a show of hands to determine whether or not students sufficiently understood a concept before moving on to the next topic. With instantaneous data at their fingertips, instructors were able to adjust their lesson plans on the fly, spending more time on topics students didn’t understand and moving on when the class demonstrated sufficient topic knowledge.
After the initial success the fire department training program experienced with its EMS classes, the lieutenant decided to invest in gamification software to achieve even higher levels of student engagement. He found software that was compatible with the clickers the class was already using to introduce an element of competition into the classroom setting, challenging students to earn points with correct answers and displaying a leaderboard to motivate participants.
The EMS trainers found this strategy ideal for increasing engagement and ensuring that all students participated. Whether they were paid employees or volunteers, students competed against one another to see who could score the most points and eagerly studied the material and paid closer attention to presentations so they could answer the most questions quickly. In addition to sparking students’ competitive spirit, the gamification software introduced visual elements into the presentation to keep students focused and engaged.
Training is a critical function across all industry sectors, but it is especially important in fields like EMS, where a knowledgeable technician can render life-saving aid to an injured person. The county fire department that incorporated training technology to gamify lesson plans and achieve greater levels of student engagement found a winning formula for learning success that can be applied to other training programs.
