By Joseph Lawrence
If the in-laws invited you over for a slide show of their vacation, how would you react? You’d most likely be bored. So why do we let it to occur in our training rooms every drill?
There is a lurking trend in the fire service: I’m not talking about PPE, a new form of construction, or a piece of equipment, but the decline of excellent fire service training. Specifically the use–or should I say misuse–of PowerPoint® presentations in fire department training. When placed in the hands of the wrong instructor, they are detrimental to training.
I spent a weekend at the Minnesota State Fire School. I don’t mean to pick on this school, since the aforementioned “disease” has been spreading throughout our training rooms and colleges for some time. However, the state fire school has always had the highest standards, with a list of specialized in-depth classes, ranging from four to 16 hours over the course of a weekend. In addition, it travels to major metropolitan areas in the state, is hosted by the local technical colleges, and is run by certified instructors. When I first attended them nearly a decade ago, they were among the most informative training sessions a firefighter could attend.
However, on my most recent visit, I realized that the fire service needs to wake up and acknowledge the deleterious effects of the PowerPoint presentation used for fire training.
A decade ago, training sessions included a lecture period. You went over your books and previous assignments. Instructors knew the topic they were teaching–they had to: they had no slides to read from and no dark corner of the room to hide in. Just when you thought you could take no more lecturing, though, your instructor got you out of your seat to perform some hands-on tasks. Although you probably only absorbed some of the lecture, the hands-on training more than made up for it. You probably were training with the same firefighters with whom you’d be performing the actual maneuvers on a real call. The only time the lights were turned down was when the instructor would present a video or draw some diagrams on the overhead projector. I’m not saying it was the best possible way to train, but firefighters knew when to take notes, ask questions, and get involved. So did instructors.
Fast forward 10 years to now. Training consists of an instructor, a laptop computer, a projector, and anywhere from 10 to 1,000 slides. More money is invested in the technology, wiring, and lighting of a training room than in your PASS device. Once you’ve taken a roll call, the lights dim, and the slide show starts–that is, as long as the equipment is working and the instructor knows how to use it. Some instructors read each sentence word-for-word as it scrolls across the white screen. The very instructors that we are supposed to look up to as leaders, specialists, and mentors are now just clickers and slide show presenters. There is no longer a need to research the topic, since the answers are right there on the screen. For my part, after 10 slides, I’m off thinking about whether I let the dog outside after I got off work, and what sort of mess I’m coming home to if I didn’t.
I’m not saying every instructor does this–some instructors use PowerPoint presentations to improve their courses. In such cases, the presentations have allowed the quick and easy transfer of a lot of information to the classroom. Notice I use the word “easily,” When did our job as firefighters become so simple that it can be summed up in a little “how-to” slide show? There is nothing easy about the job we do or the way we train to do it. Furthermore, such quality training sessions are so few and far between nowadays that the benefits of a class based solely on slide show presentations must be questioned. Such a program has made our training divisions lazy. It has taken the “fight” out of firefighting. I personally have seen two of my favorite instructors fall victim to this style of teaching. Unlike a boring video, a dry topic, or a long lecture, overusing PowerPoint presentations can actually ruin a good instructor and create a poor learning atmosphere.
For those instructors that take offense, understand one thing: You are inches away from being replaced by a recorded voice and a laptop computer. That is, if it hasn’t already happened with online training via the Internet. Down South they’d call that a “whole nuther ball of wax.”
If you’re wondering if your department has this problem, try a simple test: At your next training, fake a problem with your projector. The fire service absolutely plans on failures and has back-up plans: You don’t go running into a smoky house depending solely on the thermal imaging camera, and you always bring a back-up line to a fire. Is your instructor good enough to teach when the slide show doesn’t work? This will be a good indication whether your training is still up to snuff.
There is light at the end of the tunnel for student and the instructor, however. Instructors must know the topics on which they teach, which not only gives them strength and confidence, it gains the respect of the student.
Firefighters are very hands-on participants. For 30 firefighters stuck in a room, flipping through a slide show is a bad learning environment. But take this same group to the junkyard to cut up a car, or to a training tower for search and rescue, or to a ventilation simulator at which they can fire up a saw, and watch the student participation skyrocket.
Throw some cheap digital cameras on the rigs. There is no better way to involve students in a classroom than showing them scenes that directly affect them. For example, take your group and run them through the same old photos in a presentation they’ve been watching since they began firefighting, then throw in photos taken from scenes in which they’ve participated. You will find a class that just sat there half-asleep suddenly on the edge of its seat.
Call it a “spongy” moment, in which the class is focused and absorbing everything you’re throwing at them. It is this moment that instructors must strive to achieve, and a moment that usually is not met with standardized slide show presentations. There’s a million and one ways to get there. A good instructor will try to find which ones work best.
Joseph “Hollywood” Lawrence is a nine-year paid on-call firefighter for the City of Brooklyn Park in Minnesota. He is a certified fire instructor, an EMT, a hazardous materials technician, and a board member of the Brooklyn Park (MN) Fire Department’s relief association.
