Just over a year ago, Madrid’s Municipal Emergency and Rescue Service (SAMUR) decided to use an interactive audience polling system to train both its own staff and voluntary workers. So it purchased 130 touchpads from PowerVote with the aim of facilitating in-house learning processes.
Training keyed to acquiring and updating knowledge and skills is a growing concern not only in the private sector but also for local and public administrations, above all in fields of primary importance such as emergency health services. For this reason, a year and a half ago SAMUR decided to use an interactive audience polling system to train its own staff and voluntary workers. This tool allows for a greater level of staff participation in training courses, as well as making these more agile and agreeable.
Since SAMUR was created in 1992, training has become increasingly more relevant. The greater need of a service to handle quickly and efficiently road accidents and other emergencies occurring in the municipality of Madrid has lead SAMUR’s top management to implement of policy of continuous education for its personnel. “Training that is geared to acquiring knowledge and skills related to emergencies,” explains Ramon de Elias, training manager at SAMUR.
But in addition to training keyed to doctors and medical staff, SAMUR also offers training course to voluntary workers. This was the reason why SAMUR’s training department decided to look for more versatile and streamlined tools for the continuous education of its medical staff and voluntary workers. “So as to speed up the process and make the most of our training courses, we realized that it would be a good idea to use new technologies; interactive tools like touchpads that facilitate data transmission and make sessions more dynamic,” states Ramon de Elias.
SAMUR employs normal procedures when using the audience polling system. “We usually carry out a prior evaluation at the beginning of the session, posing a series of questions, and another at the end.”
Greater participation
When applying the audience polling system to training processes, it is possible to evaluate the acquired knowledge quickly thanks to its user-friendliness. Before beginning the session, the question and answers that will appear in the PowerPoint slides are programmed. Once this has been carried out, the touchpads are handed out to the participants and, each time they vote, the results can be viewed almost immediately thanks to the system’s software.
According to Ramon de Elias, the polling system increases the audience’s level of participation in SAMUR’s training courses. The fact that voting is anonymous means that there is greater number of replies than when other data collection systems are used. “With the touchpads, nearly 100% of those attending training sessions reply to the questions posed by the instructor,” he says.
In addition to the fact that answers are anonymous, in the opinion of Ramon de Elias the touchpads have another advantage. “If we seek their permission beforehand, we can collect all of the respondees’ personal data, including names and surnames.” Besides, the use of this system rules out the need to correct tests and, what is more important, it saves on paper.”
Increase its use
Elias acknowledges that the touchpads are not being used in all the training sessions organized by SAMUR, because “before giving classes, instructors have to provide us with a series of questions, which then have to be introduced into the system. And this signifies more work for them,” he explains.
Nevertheless, Elias states that the results obtained from the courses in which the system has been used have been optimum. Although SAMUR has only used the system in its training programme up until now, it plans to employ the touchpads for other purposes. “We want to use this system in any type of meeting that we hold, because it is an ideal way of obtaining a large number of opinions quickly and efficiently.”
