Virtual Training

In today’s interconnected world, law enforcement officers across the country are under greater scrutiny than ever. Smart phones and social media have enabled every person to become a citizen reporter who can instantaneously post events that are accessible to persons around the world.

At the same time, the rate in which human knowledge is being created is faster than any time in history.  Keeping up with this increasing amount of information is difficult at best. The issue is compounded for law enforcement agencies because of the diversity of tasks officers must engage with every day.  Officers are expected to be able to respond appropriately to a huge variety of activities every day ranging from a stranded motorist to a homicide. 

Officers must be able to interact with crime victims, suspects, mental health consumers in crisis, injured persons, medical professionals, legal counsel (prosecutors, defense attorneys), and elected officials. In each of these encounters officers must be able to effectively initiate the appropriate actions that frequently include de-escalating individuals in crisis, providing first aid, assess individual’s behavior, recognizing and collecting forensic evidence. In each of these, officers are expected to engage with the individuals in a positive and professional manner, understand the issue, identify the proper response, initiate the action, and document their actions in a comprehensive manner. All of this occurring while being recorded by the citizens, body worn cameras, and radio dispatch systems.

To effectively address these challenges, it is incumbent on officers to be prepared to respond in the most appropriate manner.  The critical component to effectively responding in each of these situations is on-going, high-quality training. This requires that agencies continuously develop their staff in a variety of ways.    To accomplish this, police leaders must identify and utilize timely, informative, and structured training.  One approach that effectively meets this need is virtual, on-line training.

On-line training is available with either free or paid options. Generally, these courses are provided in one of three ways:

• One-to-eight-hour webinars
• Eight or more-hour instructor led courses that enable the student to work at their own pace
• One eight-hour course taught over a week or longer period.^[1]

First, it is important to note these programs should be used to supplement other instruction, not replace it. Despite this, on-line training provides a number of advantages over traditional in-person classroom training.

Agencies do not have to wait for an in-person class to open with vacancies for them to attend. On-line training provides the convenience of enabling individuals to complete training when they are free of distractions, 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Staff can attend classes anytime, anywhere, provided they have internet access enabling updates to be provided faster. In addition, on-line training is less expensive than providing classroom training with, tuition, overtime, hotel, and travel costs.

Much of the in-person training tends to be focused on complex subjects that last one or more days. Having staff complete training on-line, frees time and other resources for enhanced hands-on, scenario-based training that require development and retention of skills (i.e. decision making, driving skills, defensive tactics, firearms) as well as applying operational capabilities with complex subjects (i.e. constitutional requirements, investigative techniques).

On-line training can include a variety of tools including power point slides, interactive multimedia, and videos to enhance the learning experience. Live on-line training offers students the opportunity to interact with other attendees to discuss ideas, issues, and solutions.

Despite all of its benefits, it is important to recognize on-line training is not a panacea. It takes self-discipline to focus on the instruction. Attendees cannot have the training being broadcasted in the background, be distracted with phone calls or other responsibilities. Virtual training should not be utilized to arbitrarily replace in-person training.  Rather it should be utilized to enhance these programs with up-to-date information and retention of material covered in previous classes.

Organizational leaders must identify issues that need to be addressed and create a training plan. This may include issues for the entire department (annual training) as well as specific assignments (detectives, traffic) and tenure in the profession (newer officers or recently transferred/promoted)

When reviewing on-line classes or preparing them internally, there are several general guidelines that should be considered. First, only instructors with the requisite education, training, and experience who could be recognized as a subject matter expert should be utilized to teach a course.

Some agencies have contracted with vendors, such as Virtual Academy, to offer a wide variety of classes for an established flat fee. These are exceptional for augmenting the department’s training initiatives. As one would expect, staff participation in training varies widely.  Some officers are heavily engaged in completing different classes while others may only take a few courses or none at all. Best practices suggest the department provide a specific list of required on-line courses each officer must be complete within a specified period (i.e. 1 to 3 months). In some cases, officers with specialized assignments such as detectives and traffic may be assigned additional training. After they complete those, they can attend other classes at their pleasure.

To continuously improve officers’ performance, use the on-line training as a preparatory or redundant ‘refresher’ initiative.  One option is to create roll call training programs on general concepts, evolving issues, as well as specific events. These classes should range from 10-to-15-minutes.

With the use of a digital camera, agencies can easily create customized virtual training by breaking it down into manageable segments and maximize the training with facilitated group discussions. Tests can then be used to confirm retention of information.

Finally, professionally developed programs utilize software to track individuals’ comprehension and retention of information. Testing confirms the individual understands and retained the information. It also provides a record of the training for any open records requests or subpoenas. This process enables the department to provide a record of the training and testing for retention of knowledge. In addition, when feedback suggests the material may be confusing, staff can quickly adjustments to improve the program. Individuals who do not receive a satisfactory score should be required to complete the class again.

In closing, when virtual training was initially implemented, agencies were hesitant to break from traditional in-person training. Today, most agencies are engaging with on-line training at some level.  While this approach should not be used for complex topics or developing mechanical skills, they do provide a convenient, cost-effective approach to continuously develop individuals and improving the agency’s service delivery.