Read

Reading 5: Standard operating procedure: Flash flooding and river floods. Paragraph 3, p. 1.

Duty Card No. 1, p. 16.

The first thing we have to decide is the appointment/job we will consider. As you will have noted from paragraph 3 of the reading there are ten appointments that have been identified as potentially carrying out the responsibilities/duties of the City of Launceston Flood Coordinator. All of these appointments obviously have a number of responsibilities, only one of which is the coordination of flood response activities. Therefore it is probable that they will all need at least some training in flood response as it is not a normal day to day activity.

For the purposes of our exercise we will take the job of the Engineering Manager, Works and assume that he has been delegated as the Flood Coordinator.

We start by writing the terminal objective box of the training objective hierarchy in relation to this job by writing the duty as an action statement. A measurable action such as; ‘Coordinate the City of Launceston flood response’ is appropriate in this situation. Remember that we need to list activities that can be seen and that together with a set of standards can be measured. There are other words which will meet this requirement in this case but ‘flood coordinator’ does not suffice.

The next step we need to take is to identify some of the tasks or enabling objectives that we must cover in our training if the person/trainee is to be competent after training to perform the duty.

1. I have grouped some of the tasks listed in Duty Card No. 1 under some more general headings; for instance, tasks 2, 3 and 4 on the job card could all fall under enabling objective E 1. See if you can identify other tasks in the Duty Card that may be grouped under one or other of the enabling objectives. By doing this what you have essentially done is identify the instructional objectives/sub-tasks of the duty and we can now enter these in the enabling objective boxes of the objective hierarchy.

A training objectives hierarchy for this situation would look like this:

2. Using the same process see if you can complete the diagram by filling in the instructional objective boxes I.4, I.7 and I.8. Use your own judgement here to identify the sub-tasks/instructional objectives that come under E2 and E3.

These are fairly simplistic instructional objectives and have been used merely to demonstrate a process. You might decide that for instance instructional objectives 1 to 3 can all be covered under the enabling objective E1. This is acceptable as long as you don’t overlook any element/sub-task.

The final step in the process that we need to consider is what knowledge, skills and attitudes do we need to provide the trainees? Again using our example this may be a fairly simplistic exercise but it will help demonstrate the process.

Let us take instructional objective I6: Provide media releases for the community.

3. List the knowledge, skills and attitudes that our trainees will need to have to be competent in the sub-task. I have provided some examples to get you started. These could all be included as teaching points in your instructional, enabling or terminal objectives.

4. Apply the same procedure to instructional objective I2.

Read

Reading 14: Extracts from Australian emergency manual: Training management, Chapter 4, paragraph 4.16 and Figure 4.2.

View the above video ‘training objective matrix’.

1. When do you think it is appropriate to expect or need less than 100% performance of a task? Include examples in your answer. List three situations in which 100% performance is warranted.
2. One standard that may be less measurable than the others because it is more subjective is: ‘information is clearly presented’. Write this in a more measurable way.
3. Now that we have completed this example together, see if you can produce a training objective of your own, using either one of the other examples provided or your own SOP and job and task analysis.