RE: On-line class Crisis Comm for 9-1-1 Supes

[Guest guest]

I just finished it. Great class, in my opinion.

I'm going to recommend all the supervisors at my agency take it.

Here's a basic description of the course from within the course itself:

" This course is not designed to make you an expert in dealing with the

media during a public safety emergency, but it will help you understand

the media's role in dealing with information in a crisis, as well as

your role in gathering and managing that information as it moves through

the chain of command and toward the media and the public.

Understanding the media will also help you be more effective in your

public education efforts, where television, radio, and newspaper

coverage will help you spread the word about the appropriate use of

9-1-1. "

And a line within the course that I think will help sell it to the

supervisors I work with; the course helps us " Recognize how to

effectively redirect reporters to public information officers. "

A couple of things I didn't like about it though:

-I had some problems with it displaying correctly in Internet Explorer,

and ended up doing the course in Firefox. The " Knowledge Assessment "

sections wouldn't finish loading in IE.

-At the end of each section, you're supposed to be able to click EXIT to

exit the course and be taken back to the main screen to choose the next

section and continue. That should mark the section as completed. The

EXIT button (at least in Firefox) did not close the section and return

me to the main screen - I had to manually click the Home button in the

course to take me back and manually click the " mark course reviewed "

button to mark the section completed.

-It didn't automatically create a certificate of completion at the end

of the course or email you one. Instead, on the introduction page it

says once a month they send the completed courses to FEMA and you get a

letter of completion emailed at that point.

If you only have access to IE, that might be a problem - but all in all,

even with a couple of glitches, I still think it's an excellent course

and hope my department will let me take the instructor-led version later

this year! (Which seems to be a 2-day course, as opposed to a 4-hour

contact on-line course.)

-- Bayer

ville/Vanderburgh County Central Dispatch 9-1-1

From: Bayer,

Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 5:31 PM

To: 911TALK

Subject: [911talk] On-line class Crisis Comm for 9-1-1 Supes

Did anyone know about this?! I just found it while looking up info on

an in-person class there.

http://cms.bsu.edu/Academics/CentersandInstitutes/ACCT/Courses.aspx

I'm taking the on-line class right now (only in section 2 so far) - so

far seems like a great class for 9-1-1 supervisors.