Abstract
Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, on-site Incident Commander (IC) practical training and examinations in Sweden were canceled as of March 2020. The graduation of one IC class was, however, conducted through Remote Virtual Simulation (RVS), the first such examination to our current knowledge. This paper presents the necessary enablers for setting up RVS and its influence on cognitive aspects of assessing practical competences. Data were gathered through observations, questionnaires, and interviews from students and instructors, using action-case research methodology. The results show the potential of RVS for supporting higher cognitive processes, such as recognition, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, and allowed students to demonstrate whether they had achieved the required learning objectives. Other reported benefits were the value of not gathering people (imposed by the pandemic), experiencing new, challenging incident scenarios, increased motivation for applying RVS based training both for students and instructors, and reduced traveling (corresponding to 15,400 km for a class). While further research is needed for defining how to integrate RVS in practical training and assessment for IC education and for increased generalizability, this research pinpoints current benefits and limitations, in relation to the cognitive aspects and in comparison, to previous examination formats.
Highlights
The cognitive aspects of recognition, learning, decision making, and problem solving were studied through questionnaires which the students filled post-training
The results indicate that the Remote Virtual Simulation (RVS), as implemented in the analyzed training and examination, adequately supported the above-mentioned cognitive aspects
This study demonstrated a proof of concept developed under time pressure, and with the precondition that students should be able to use standard PC equipment to perform their Incident Commander (IC)-1 final examination remotely
Summary
Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) personnel respond to a wide range of emergencies affecting the civil society. The Incident Commander (IC) on the first (lowest) level in the command chain (IC-1) is often the first officer arriving at the incident scene, and thereby responsible for the initial assessment, decisions on the initial actions, and for providing accurate and informative reports to higher officers and/or the command center. Incident commanders are devoted firefighters who have acquired additional competence for leading responses. An IC at the first level of command (IC-1) will usually lead four or five firefighters’ actions with relevant equipment (a firetruck and a water truck) during handling routine incidents (for the emergency services) and the initial phase of more serious incidents, until an IC trained at a higher level arrives at the scene. The total force of the Swedish Fire Service consists of 12,500 responders (of which 2/3 are employed part-time, i.e., have other regular jobs as their main occupation)
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