The Effectiveness of a First Aid at Work Class - Coursework Example

The effectiveness of a First Aid at Work class can be measured in four ways; organization, execution, and evaluation and possible improvements. The specific class that we will look at is the class FAW25. This course was conducted with the intent of ensuring that the students in attendance would receive knowledge that will enable them to provide basic first aid techniques. These skills may make the difference between a healthy recovery and even the preservation of their life. Organization is very important to the success of any class. Poor planning can lead to timely delays, missed training, and even the cancellation of the course. Prior to the class, a few measures were taken in its preparations. First, we looked at the core of our class and that is the information that is to be presented. The objectives are already established through the syllabus of the RFAW and FAW, so our focus will be to organize the structure of the delivery of the information as well as facilitating all the hands on practical exercises. This organization was accomplished through the use of a session plan. The session plan outlined every aspect of what was to be done. It tells us what is to be taught, who is teaching it, location, special equipment, delivery method, start and end times. Once we are firm on what is to be taught, we must then decide on the delivery method and learning technique to be utilized. The progress of technology gives us many tools to use but we must choose these tools wisely because not all tools fit every situation. For this class, a PowerPoint presentation, handouts, and a workbook were utilized. The PowerPoint presentation was used to help reinforce the lectures. This will help give the student a visual representation of what was being said. The workbook and handouts acts more as a reference that the student can refer back to either during certain points of the class or at home. All of these tools will reinforce the lecture that was given. Careful thought went into the learning technique to be used. For this class, the students would be formed into groups because as stated by scholars before, ‘Groups are viewed as a powerful means of learning, which can be an environment in which people invent and explore symbolic structures for understanding the world, learning from each other; or they can encourage conformity, squander time and energy on ritual combat, revel in failure’. (Knights1993). This group will be formal, due to the fact that everyone who belongs to the group must arrive at the same conclusion. This is why a collaborative learning strategy was taken because it provides students with simple tasks which are less structured, but can be related to their daily lives so that the practicality of the course is realized and maintained. The final aspect that was considered was our student audience. This information is needed to know so that a proper teaching technique could be chosen. The plan entailed placing the students in pairs, groups of three and four. This grouping in turn would give the students a sense of interdependence amongst the other members of the group. This grouping gave the students a common bond of sharing while it afforded the instructor an opportunity to clearly observe the groups or individuals as to ascertain the level of proficiency that the information is being retained and more importantly applied. The execution of the session plan was closely followed. The information itself did not pose much difficulty. The students were eager to learn and seemed to grasp the information quite easily. The PowerPoint presentation gave the students the main idea of each sub topic while following along with the lecture. There were points of the session plan where the class segment went over its allotted time. This was due to the lack of certain resources, mainly manikins, to accommodate all the students. This lack of equipment caused the hands on portion of the training to become slow and therefore caused the class to go over time. Besides the fact that there was a shortage of equipment, the practical exercises went extremely well. Each student was able to practice and put into actual use the information that they had just received over the last few hours. The students showed a genuine interest in the material as well as showing an understanding of the lesson’s intent. As the course went along, the students seemed to grasp the information fairly well. There was no long bombardment of questions after class or students having trouble answering review questions. The students also found the handouts to be very informative and extremely useful; it served its intended purpose by providing a readily available reference guide. Once the lessons’ were taught and the hands on skills demonstrated and practiced, it was time to evaluate the students to see if they have mastered a specific level of proficiency. We tested the students in several ways, oral questions, practical assessments, and written multiple choice questions. The oral questions were used mainly to check if the information that was just given out was understood. For example, if the instructor completes a 25 min block of instruction and immediately follows it with a few oral questions, the students should be able to answer the questions correctly or at least able to make a logical attempt, giving a reasonable answer. If too many students are having difficulty with the questions then this may indicate a problem with the delivery of the information or the information itself may be confusing. The practical assessments are a way to evaluate the practical application of the skills taught. This evaluation begins with the student practicing the skills up until the formal hands on testing. The students did very well during these portions of the class and as stated earlier, the students displayed much eagerness towards the course. Of course the best way to evaluate whether or not the students understood and retained the information from the lectures is to give a written exam. The exam given in this case was a 50 question multiple choice test. The results of the exam proved to be positive. The overall success rate was that everyone passed. The highest score was a 98%, the lowest was an 80% and with the average being 86.7%., proving that the students was able to grasp the information that was given during the lecture. Once the materials for the class are prepared and the information taught and evaluated, this does not end the class. A review of the course must take place so that good and bad points may be recognized. Everything that went good with the course needs to be implemented and repeated for future classes and everything that went wrong need not be repeated or better still, prevented. In some cases, nothing needs to go wrong but a better way of doing a certain task may be discovered in order to create a smoother transition or to give a clearer presentation. For this class, the session plan was a very useful tool. It kept the instructor focused and on time. A session plan is a must have in preparing and executing a class. The minor downfall of the class was the lack of equipment, in this case manikins, for the number of students training. Because there was a lack of manikins, this caused a disruption in the flow of training, and caused the instructor to have to fill in the void that the gap in time with the equipment created. So the First Aid at Work class was prepared, taught and evaluated for meeting the course objectives, which seems to have been met. This is evident in the student feedback in the form of student comments, practical training, and results of written comprehension exams. This class was energetic and exciting but most importantly all objectives were met. Read More