PRESS RELEASE 10/17/2005

Georgetown City (S.C.) Fire Department Launches ILUMINAR
PRESS RELEASE 4/18/2006
W.Va. State Fire Commission Approves Silverton Fire Department CBT  

PRESS RELEASE

 11/02/2005

Cape Fear (N.C.) Computer Training on the Move;

 $10 Million Training Center Planned

HAMPSTEAD, N.C. (Nov. 2, 2005) – Becky Porter, director of Cape Fear Community College (CFCC) Fire Training, has announced that the college’s Hampstead computer training center for firefighters will move to a new $10 million “Safety Training Center” in 2007.

The Hampstead center is one of two computer training centers delivering ACTION TRAINING SYSTEMS (ATS), Inc., interactive training to firefighters from across the region and the state. It will temporarily move to a new building on CFCC’s North Campus in January 2006.

Currently offering training at 20 computers, the Hampstead center will shut down for the first move in December and reopen in January in Burgaw. Another center with 12 computers at the Myrtle Grove Volunteer Fire Department, near Wilmington city limits, will maintain its location and hours.

In the fall of 2007, the Hampstead computer training center will become part of a new Safety Training Center on the CFCC’s North Campus in Wilmington. The center will be funded by CFCC, the City of Wilmington and New Hanover County. Plans also include a training tower, a residential burn building, a commercial burn building, an apparatus driving pad, drafting pit, classrooms and meeting spaces.

Approved as training delivery agencies by the Office of State Fire Marshal (OSFM) under the N.C. Department of Insurance, CFCC Fire Training computer centers first opened in the fall of 2001 and have provided more than 5,000 hours of training. Currently the centers offer ACTION TRAINING SYSTEMS’ Firefighter I and Firefighter II series. Their main mission is to support training in the Cape Fear region, but about 20% of users come from fire departments across the state, Porter said.

CFCC Fire Training launched the local area network (LAN)-based ILUMINAR LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (ILMS) in January 2005 in both computer centers. Previously, it offered ACTION TRAINING SYSTEMS’ courses only in CD-ROM format.

Porter was pleased with the move away from CDs, which can become worn or lost. Now, thanks to the new ILMS, all course content is stored on a CFCC’s local server. Instructors control students’ access to the courses over the network. ILMS also provides instructors with utilities to manage student data.

Porter said she’s “ecstatic” with the ILMS platform: “Once we got everything installed and working right, we have had very few problems.”

All courses are multimedia, interactive, self-paced and instructionally designed to meet NFPA standards.

After taking the computer training, students become eligible for practical skills and written tests that CFCC Fire Training holds each month for firefighter certification.

CFCC Fire Training’s core business is still instructor-led classes at the center in Hampstead and on location at fire departments in Pender and New Hanover counties. It also holds three annual seminars that attract hundreds of fire service personnel from across the state.

Of course, computer-based training is ideally delivered in conjunction with live instructor training – either as an introduction to the material or as a review, but Porter said it also provides an alternative for those firefighters who either can’t attend classes or just prefer computer-based learning.

 “A lot of paid firefighters work 24-hour shifts,” Porter said, “and their schedules will not accommodate taking classes on a normal schedule. So these people can come into the learning lab and take classes when it’s open and when it’s convenient for them and get their firefighter certification.”

The computer training also helps fill the training gap for volunteer firefighters. Some of North Carolina’s smaller, rural departments either don’t have training available or only offer “in-house” training that doesn’t meet the OSFM’s rigorous standards. Firefighters sometime travel for several hours to the Hampstead or Myrtle Grove centers to get training they can’t get at home.

CFCC gives students a copy of the practical skills required by the certification test and, if they can’t attend a live class, encourages them to get hands-on training with a firefighter at home who is proficient in the skills.

Experienced firefighters often use the computer courses for efficient refresher training. Many of them already have a good foundation of the knowledge and skills required and don’t really need to sit in a classroom, Porter said.

All students benefit from self-paced instruction. ATS computer-based training is designed to enable firefighters to watch each section as many – or as few -- times as they need to absorb the information. Each section tests students on the learning objectives and, if answered incorrectly, loops them back to the information they need to review. 

Currently, the OSFM requires a state-certified instructor to be on site with students for all certification training, which limits computer training center hours, but Porter feels that a system to overcome that requirement won’t be too far in the future.  She notes that other fire departments that offer ATS training might consider sending firefighters to CFCC labs, where they could zip through the courses they’ve studied and advance more quickly to certification.

Computer-based training is not for everyone, Porter notes. Some old-school firefighters and instructors resist the concept.” I don’t think we’ll ever have everybody believing that computer training is a good thing, but it’s what the world is going to, so we can either do it or get left behind. Someone is going to do it, and as long as the Office of State Fire Marshal reviews the program and says they support it, it’s something we’ll be doing.”

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