Remote Police Training- Value added or a temporary fix?
/By Lt. Joseph Pangaro
There was a time when the biggest concern a law enforcement officer had about training was if the instructor would bore then to death with a PowerPoint presentation and a droning voice for eight hours.
Now, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, and its attendant lockdowns and shutdowns of in-person training options, we all get to sit in front of a computer screen for eight hours and do our best not to have our kids or pets walk into the room, or have our spouses yelling on the phone or participating in an online meeting of their own as we try to avoid death by video PowerPoint. The question then is clear; is this new world of remote, online training a value to us or is it just a temporary fix to a challenging situation?
The answer, from what I can see is a very simple … it depends.
It depends on who is doing the training, the topics, and how the classes are taught. All of these individual pieces of the puzzle will determine the quality of the online program, how interesting and engaging it will be and if the vehicle will have any longevity.
Let’s start with the instructor. If the instructor was a boring presenter during live training events, it’s a fair bet to say they will be even worse when it comes to presenting remotely online. That just makes sense. You can make lemonade from lemons, but if they are bitter lemons they will be hard to swallow no matter how much you mix them up.
The key here for online instructors to be successful is to always keep the student or audience in mind when preparing the class, using the right equipment to present and choosing the best digital platform to teach from.
My training company, True Security Design / Pangaro Training took this challenge on at the start of the COVID crisis. We saw the coming need for adapting to the changing environment and providing a dynamic alternative to replace the in-person training we have all become used to.
To do that we focused on these points for the instructor:
· Be energetic and enthusiastic, upbeat and positive.
· Ensure you engage the at-home audience by including them in discussion and question and answer periods.
· Create interesting interaction segments in the training so they are not just sitting at home staring at the screen.
· Make it fun by addressing the new dynamic and asking about any difficulties they are having with the format and explain the situation from the instructor’s point of view as well.
· Understand the platform you are using and spice up the presentation with videos, diagrams, pictures and other media to make the program visually stimulating. Being sure you know how to operate the features of the platform is crucial, so you don’t have delays or “dead air” as you flip between media.
· Conduct a survey after each class to learn how you are being perceived and how to improve your delivery.
· Take a presentation course if you haven’t already done so.
Next, let’s talk about the equipment we use to present online remote training. The right platform is critical as well as the cameras, speakers and monitors you use so your at-home students can see and hear you clearly. A slow platform or one with only a few features will limit your ability to be creative and make for a boring presentation.
A quality camera with a wide field is important so the audience can see you, your inflection and passion as you teach, just like a live in-person audience can. I use role-playing actors in many of our classes. Good cameras will bring that remote role play aspect to life and make for a good class.
Choose good media to add value to your program. Online remote training is a hybrid presentation that should combine live interaction by the instructor with multi-media to enhance the experience, think of yourself as a TV talk show host, teacher, video producer and director all at once. There are many elements to creating a good class that people will enjoy and learn from.
When it comes to the topics we can present successfully remotely online, we must consider our own abilities to present, our understanding of the material, our creative skills and most importantly our desire to create a great program.
Conducting a crime scene investigation course can be very difficult to pull off remotely online because of the hands-on nature of the crime scene work we are trying to teach. Things such as latent fingerprint dusting and lifting, evidence identification and recovery, crime scene photography and interview skills are difficult enough to teach and present live and in-person and almost impossible via a remote online program, but it can be done if you plan and execute it right.
The key is understanding how to make the students feel connected to the program, how they can participate in any skill development from their home and have success at it.
Here are a few planning items to do a class like this:
· Provide a written guide for each skill taught in the form of a manual or booklet that the student gets before the class to become familiar with the skill.
· Provide a list of materials the student will need to gather before the class, so they are ready to go on class day. These should be things like fingerprint kits, lifting tape and items to dust (Soda cans or envelopes etc.).
· Be prepared to spend time with each student as they practice a skill remotely, that means having things for the other students to do as you work your way through the class.
· Consider how many assistants you need to do this and if you can use “breakout rooms” on the platform you chose.
· The use of role players and how they will interact with the students, as a group or individually.
These things take a lot of prep work, but if you give them the due diligence they deserve, even a difficult class like crime scene investigation can be taught remotely. Besides, that might be the only way we can teach this for a while, so finding creative ways to teach is the goal and responsibility of the instructor.
And finally, for this piece let’s talk about how we teach remotely. Making the topics engaging and valuable takes effort on the part of the instructors. We have to look at this as an opportunity to continue to provide the officers we serve with quality training that will make them better at what they do and better able to serve the public we all sworn to serve.
Being an engaging personality can be confused with being funny or entertaining. Those aspects are important for a good presentation, but they should not be the main focus. Passion is the thing that makes a remote, online training program successful. Passing on our knowledge, skill and experience can come through in-person or remotely if we are genuine in our desire to teach.
Since this COVID era began, we have taught over 300 remote students in groups of 15-25 at a time. We are at the beginning of this new world of training and I have decided that it is an important process for law enforcement and many other industries for that matter. I took my energetic and passionate live performance to the remote world and so far it has worked.
We conduct surveys after each class, and so far the reviews have all been great. The students say they have been engaged and felt like part of a real class. That is not easy to do, it takes all of the energy I can muster each and every class, but it is worth it. If you are going to conduct remote training or send your officers to remote training you should consider the positive aspects and how it will help your officers and agency.
Chiefs have said that COVID lockdowns aside, they like the idea of remote training because their officers don’t have to travel, they aren’t on the road for hours driving to and from a class, and they still get the training they want their officers to have. The students have said they like remote training for the same reasons and many of them have taken the training from the comfort of their own houses.
As I see it, remote training will be with us in law enforcement for a long time after the COVID threat passes us because it is the wave of the future. We are all online and living in a digital world. Police training is vital for the officers and the communities we serve. Bringing it to them in a convenient way like remote, online training is innovative and serves us all very well.
It all depends on how it is delivered, who is delivering it, and what we want to get from it. Using the guide points I listed should help you going forward to create great training or find a great trainer for your officers. Either way, remote online training is the new paradigm and we should all embrace it!
