By Kurt Glosser
Imagine that a new instructor has been assigned to the training division and has come to you and asked, “What does an interactive lecture look like?” Think about classes you attended where you really learned a lot, whether at FDIC, at your state fire academy, or within your department. Think about classes that you really enjoyed and came away with a lot of information. Recall some characteristics of the learning environment that those instructors created.
We know which classes we don’t like: those from which we learned nothing, those with a passive learning environment, the straight lecture presentation–an environment that produces a 5 percent retention rate. When I hear the word “presentation,” I think of a bad salesman, of one-way communication. The training room in your fire station must be an educational setting where interaction with our firefighters is high. The more they do, the more they learn and retain. Retention rates increase to 50 percent when discussion takes place and 75 percent when learners practice by doing.1 (Silberman)
How do you learn best? How do your students learn best? Most firefighters would respond “by doing,” not by sitting in a chair as a lecturer rapidly fires word after word at them. It doesn’t take long before the lecturer starts to sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher. Now consider how you teach. Do your instructional methods match your audience’s preferred learning style, or is it the complete opposite? You have probably been asked to teach because you are seen as an expert in a given discipline. If I had to guess, you have acquired your skills and knowledge over time, with practice and experience. So, why attempt to train others in a short training session that includes little to no student interaction or participation?
What can you as an instructor do to get your firefighters to interact with the material, interact with you, and interact with each other? What meaningful activities that are clearly tied to the desired objectives could be incorporated into your next training session? How can we evolve beyond straight lectures, lectures with questions, or even illustrated lectures?
An interactive lecture is a classroom-based session that incorporates active learning techniques in which less emphasis is put on transmitting information and more on activities that engage the learner. The instructor’s goal is to build in some type of activity every 20 minutes to break up the instructor-led PowerPoint® lecture with other instructional methods such as guided discussion, case study, information search, group inquiry, jigsaw learning, simulations, writing tasks, and so on. The book Active Training2 is a good resource that explains these activities in detail and gives and explanation of each.
Other ways to break up your lecture could include shorter activities such as having students do the following:
- Define a term or explain a concept in their own words on a blank sheet of paper and then have a few share their explanations with the rest of the class.
- Explain the covered material to their neighbor.
- Reflect and produce a list of main points in summary of the topic.
- Work in pairs to answer questions about a video.
- Develop quiz questions for other students.
- Use the interactive resources provided by publishers online or on CD.
Remember the “Application Step” from your Instructor I class. This crucial step allows the student to apply new information so that it is transformed into usable knowledge and processed into their long-term memory. The application step is not just for the psychomotor domain, where we allow time for supervised practice of a skill, but also for the cognitive domain. Generally, firefighters learn all aspects of the job better by doing.
Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, said, “What I hear, I forget.” Silberman, the author of Active Training, expanded on this in his Active Learning Credo, stating: “When I hear, see, and discuss, I acquire knowledge.” Thus our goal as fire service instructors is not just to transmit information but to transfer information to our firefighters, enhancing our crew’s performance for the next job. In your next training sessions, provide the opportunity for your crew to ask questions and discuss the topic, apply new information, and perhaps even teach another firefighter what they have discovered. Then, the odds are that real learning has occurred.
References
Silberman, Melvin L. (1998) Active Training: A handbook of techniques. 2nd Edition.
Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, A Wiley Company, San Francisco, CA.
Fire and Emergency Services Instructor, (2006). International Fire Service Training Association
7th Edition. Fire Protection Publications. Stillwater, OK.
KURT GLOSSER is a 13-year fire service veteran and an engineer with the Savoy (IL) Fire Department. He is also an education specialist with the Illinois Fire Service Institute. He has a master’s degree in human resource development and various fire and EMS certifications. He also instructs for Southern Illinois University’s fire science management program.
