Episode 287: Building the Fire Academy of the Future with Ken Willette

Episode notes

What are essential elements of the fire academy of the future?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

In this episode:

What should immersive learning focus on?

Measurable ways to evaluate training effectiveness

How to customize firefighter training

Hear from Ken Willette , the Executive Director of the North American Fire Training Directors .

Ken dives into how immersive learning and simulation are reshaping the fire service. He shares the evolution from early grant applications to today’s robust projects, emphasizing that technology must serve the learner, not just the gadget.

Ken explains how tools like rubrics and conformity assessments are giving instructors the ability to measure outcomes, bridge generational gaps, and tailor training to every career stage. This conversation highlights the momentum behind VR, simulators, and immersive learning as essential elements of the fire academy of the future.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro from the TRAIN Summit
2. 0:37 Launching the TRAIN mini-series with Ken Willette
3. 1:26 Five years of talking immersive learning
4. 2:29 From a denied grant to the Fire Academy of the Future
5. 3:33 Immersive learning: anything that engages more than two senses
6. 5:29 Why instructors and students were suspicious of the tech
7. 6:28 The rubric and the conformity assessment framework
8. 8:18 The instructor is the key to measuring quality
9. 9:48 Three scenarios: pump ops, driving, highway incidents
10. 12:06 Training that follows your whole career
11. 13:32 The best place to fail is the training ground
12. 16:23 The next five to ten years for immersive learning
13. 18:12 Wrap

Questions answered in this episode

What is the North American Fire Training Directors and what is their focus?

Ken Willette explains it is a membership organization for state and provincial level directors of fire training. Five to six years ago they saw the emergence of technology as a tool for immersive learning and began studying how virtual reality, augmented reality, and similar tools fit into the Fire Academy of the Future.

Hear it at 2:29

How does the fire service define immersive learning?

Ken Willette says one firefighter defined it as anything that engages more than two senses. That definition was an aha moment because it meant immersive learning is not technology dependent but is what the fire service already does every day on the apparatus floor and during inspections.

Hear it at 2:29

What are the two main outcomes of the Train project?

Ken Willette describes a rubric to evaluate learner performance, which lets the fire service assess whether learning took place and to what level, and a conformity assessment framework that helps the fire service and technology developers communicate about whether a product meets training needs and job performance requirements.

Hear it at 5:29

What role do instructors play in immersive learning?

Ken Willette says instructors observe the student output and evaluate it against the stated objective. Immersive learning tools will rely on instructors to deliver the curriculum and to hone their assessment skills, identifying whether a student struggles or performs a task effortlessly.

Hear it at 8:18

How can immersive learning be customized for different career levels?

Ken Willette says immersive learning through technology can be customized to the location, the equipment a department uses, and the knowledge level of the user. It can be problem solving exercises for senior firefighters rather than repetition exercises designed for basic recruits.

Hear it at 12:06

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 287 transcript

Building the Fire Academy of the Future with Ken Willette

Speakers: Ken Willette, Kevin Sofen

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome back to the Smart Firefighting Podcast. Today, we're at the Train Summit, where leaders from across the fire service, research, and industry are tackling one big question. How can immersive learning make training better, faster, and safer? From virtual reality and simulators to new performance rubrics, we explore how technology can boost decision-making, generational gaps and bring more sets and reps to every firefighter, whether it's in a big city or a rural volunteer department. It's about turning cool tools into trusted training that delivers real results. Enjoy. And we are officially launching the first podcast in this little mini-series of the Training Responders Awareness Using Immersive Next-Gen Training Summit, held at the Illinois Fire Service Institute with the ring leader himself, Ken Willette with the NAFTD, North American Fire Training Directors. Ken, how you doing?

[1:02] Ken Willette: I'm doing well, Kevin. Thanks, and thanks for the opportunity once again to sit with you and discuss about stuff that we're doing that we like.

[1:08] Kevin Sofen: I was thinking this, you are definitely one of the more frequented podcasters on smart firefighting. I know we've done at least one virtual. I know we did one at NFPA two years ago on a trash can.

[1:20] Ken Willette: On a trash can, yep.

[1:22] Kevin Sofen: And now we're here at IFSI, so thank you for being a frequent guest.

[1:26] Ken Willette: Well, Kevin, my relationship with you goes back, I think it's five years now, and we met you in my early career with the training directors. So it's kind of like a parallel journey with Ken and Kevin in immersive learning, because the focus of our conversation has always been immersive learning. So looking back to what we talked about, we hoped could happen, and versus what is happening now, I think it's pretty cool. There's been some good progress.

[1:52] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, and I've worn a few hats and it's been cool to be on the industry side, the nonprofit side, just the media side, but particularly from the industry side it's been very helpful to talk with you, learn with you about, okay, this tech is great, this widget is cool, but what does it do for me? How does it actually help me as a fire service do my job better, faster, safer? And obviously we're going a mile deep here in virtual reality, so maybe even take a little step back and like, why we're even here, how did we get here today? This is not the first event in this process. Give us a little 30,000 foot view, a little bit of unearthing some of the past year.

[2:29] Ken Willette: So the North American Fire Training Directors, membership organization for the state and provincial level directors of fire training. And six years, five years ago, we saw the emergence of tech as a tool for immersive learning. And what really grabbed our attention was the build-out of virtual reality, augmented reality, XR, MR, and all of those. And we said, how does that look like in the Fire Academy of the Future? And we submitted to the Assistance to Firefighter Grants Program for a federally funded grant to study the Fire Academy of the Future. Proud to say it was denied. And we had to look back and say, why was it denied? And we realized we hadn't refined the concept enough. So the next time we applied, we looked at the firefighter immersive learning environment to study what is the current state of affairs with the fire service looking at immersive learning. We went into this thinking about, it was gonna be focusing on the technology enablers, AR, VR. And through the course of that research, we were funded, we did a two year project. We had one firefighter that when we asked him, what's your definition of immersive learning? He said, anything that engages more than two senses. And that was like an aha moment. It was kind of like, whoa, wait a minute, that's not a technology dependent, That's what you do every day in the fire service on the apparatus floor. That's every day what the fire service does with walkthrough inspections. And we almost felt that we had been using the technology and the focus on the technology was kind of stalling us from being able to see the possibilities because we were trying to answer questions relative to the technology instead of questions relative to the learner and what are their needs. So we completed that project and through that project, We did do a summit two years ago at the Illinois Fire Service Institute. And we also provided a roadmap and a SWOT analysis. And I think those three deliverables, which are available, were really actionable items. We completed those projects and we said, now we've got to go to the next level. And the next level was that human interaction piece. But how do we assess the quality of the interaction? How do we assess what's being learned? and how do we assess the technology to meet those needs and enhance the dialogue between the technology developers and the fire service, thus the train project and doing a deeper dive.

[4:52] Kevin Sofen: So there was initially the file and now we're here at train and it seems like I've heard you say a few times it's that evolution from noxious to tech. Of course, the tech is the delivery mechanism for all this but really the questions to the learner and this dynamic of now we're at train. And if you can see in the video here, it's the train summit and Ken also a man of many talents, the artist, little train there, choo-choo in the background. So train and the learner. Tell me more about kind of the focus now and what this means and how this applies to both the end user, the firefighter and the lessons learned for industry that's building solutions.

[5:29] Ken Willette: So through the SWOT analysis, we saw that instructors and firefighter students were suspicious of the technology as a learning medium. They didn't know if it was credible. They didn't know if they were gonna be trained to the same level as actual hands-on experience. Those are very valid concerns. In the fire service, when you're training somebody, you've got to train them to be battle ready, so to speak, on a moment's notice and be able to act without hesitation. So we wanted to do and say, but yet we were looking at the US military, we were looking at emergency room physicians and trauma specialists. They were using immersive learning technologies to train. Navy aviators spent countless hours in simulation. You're not going to take a new student and put him in a $16 million aircraft and tell him, expect him to fly successfully the first time. And it begged the question, if they can do that in that high risk environment for top gun aviators, how can we apply that to the fire service? So in this project with Dr. Kate Kapalo, and that's her specialty, is this human and behavioral interaction with learning technologies. We were able to look at other professions and drawing upon them, come up with some tools, a rubric, which is meant to enable the fire service to look at the training that's taking place through the immersive learning technology and evaluate the performance of the learner and to be able to say, did learning take place and to what level can we document it? So we're real pleased with that. We think that's a great step forward along with the conformity assessment framework, which looks more to the product and does the product meet the needs of the fire service and having a tool for the fire service and the technology developer to be able to talk back and forth. This is what we need. This is the level of fire party we're trying to train. Here's the JPR, the job performance requirement that's involved and to allow the developer to go back and to code it successfully to be able to have the outcomes that will be measurable upon the completion of the technology tool. So, yeah, we're real excited about the two tools that have come out of this project.

[7:38] Kevin Sofen: And I've heard you say a few times now of assessing the quality of the interaction. I know it's sometimes tough when we're trying to quantify qualitative stuff, and it's sort of, again, there's dynamics of how we can, you know, you can check a box, you know how to do this, and there's some quantitative nature here, but there's a lot of qualitative dynamics of the emotional soft skills with here. And I hear you keep talking about assessing the quality and I know that's so important when we're talking about creating some kind of return on investment when if a department or a training academy is spending 50 to $100,000 on something, if you're gonna do that, great, but how do I know that the quality and interactions are leading to better outcomes?

[8:18] Ken Willette: Sure, the solution to that, the instructor. So you have the technology tool, which is able to put the learner into the immersive environment and have them simulate a behavior against known conditions. And then we have the established standards through the job performance requirements, which list what the outcome has to be. Somebody has to be there to observe the output and evaluate it against the stated objective. That's the instructor. So immersive learning tools are gonna rely on instructors to not only deliver the curriculum, but also to hone their assessment skills, to be able to make that distinction between somebody who struggles to perform a task as opposed to performing it effortlessly, as opposed to analyzing and working across Bloom's taxonomy, which is the basis of the job performance requirements of the JPRs, working within those verbs to be able to identify what level of performance the student is behaving at, if you will. And that's gonna be the role of the instructor.

[9:29] Kevin Sofen: And then you mentioned this role of the instructor, but also before that you talked about sort of these two outcomes. Are these two outcomes, what I'm looking at here, kind of the focus on the pump panel and the driver performance? Can you tell me more about kind of what these are and how they're kind of gonna be deployed across the fire service?

[9:48] Ken Willette: So when we were developing the evaluation tool to measure the outcomes, we took three user case scenarios. We took the pump operator's simulator. We took the. emergency vehicle operator simulator, and we took a highway incident where you had advanced incident command in scene management techniques that were required. The reason we chose those three is there's already many tools available to do that. So we felt number one, this is something the fire service has accepted, the use of these high-fidelity simulators, and number two, we have state training academies that have been using them successfully. So we had a place to go and do the observation element of the research to look at the student interaction with the instructors and then to measure the rubric against it. So what the rubric does is say that if a student is using a pump simulator to simulate operating the fire pump on the fire ground, controlling the flow of water, managing the pressure, operating the relief valve, transitioning from tank supply to hydrant supply, a variety of those skills and being observed what level are they doing it at? That tool can determine is the person a novice, an advanced beginner, are they competent, or are they almost expert in their ability? And the way you discern that, are they struggling to do it, have they mastered it, that they're doing it thoughtlessly with repetition time and time again with no failure? So those identifiable benchmarks are what are being evaluated. And we copied that over to the emergency vehicle operation simulator, But the pump simulator really seemed to stand out because of its widespread adoption by the fire service already, the integration of the thinking with the manual rote skills, if you will, that you have to do routinely. And it was a, we think we've created a very valuable tool to use with that.

[11:43] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. I mean, as I read through it now, it's extremely detailed and I can see that the evolutions from novice to advanced beginner, the competent, proficient and expert. So granted, I think for instructors, I can imagine And this is a useful guide that allows them to best guide trainers, trainees on how to determine where they're at and then figure out what are the little things they can do to continue to get better.

[12:06] Ken Willette: And one of the other points we make through this grant, Kevin, in the conformity assessment framework, fire service learning follows your career pathway. You enter as a novice and by the time you retire, you're probably at a near expert level. Well, not all training curriculums can address that range. Very often training curriculums are honed in at the novice to maybe the advanced beginner, but that's selling the fire service short because training should be something that can happen regularly. It should be engaging. It should speak to the need of the firefighter for the point of their career. And I think immersive learning, because through technology can be customizable. It can be customizable to the location of the scenario. It can be customizable to what they're interacting with to represent what that department utilizes, whether it's apparatus or training grounds. And it can be customizable to the level of knowledge of the user so that it's not a senior firefighter having to sit through an evolution that was designed for a basic recruit firefighter, which a lot of training is, but it addresses the fact that they've got years of experience and you can be more of a problem solving thought capacity development exercise, as opposed to the repetition exercise that typically we perform at the basic levels of firefighting skills.

[13:32] Kevin Sofen: And early on, you mentioned how you initially applied for this Fire Academy of the Future, and you denied. It was denied. You could say getting denied is considered a failure. I like this idea of many people think, oh, if you fail, it's bad. But the idea from what I've heard a lot talking with you and others is that one of the best place to fail is in the training ground. The best place to fail is in the training operation dynamic. And when thinking about, again, this immersive learning as a whole, part of it, in my opinion, is how can we enable fire service to train more, to train faster, to train more conveniently, just to train more is better in a setting. Tell me more and kind of build on that thought of kind of like why immersive learning allows the opportunity to kind of train in a, it doesn't have to be where you have 30 training cadets going on a bus, four hours outside the city in a full day event to go to the burn tower. There's different training that can be done on a more frequent basis. And then also kind of speak on the dynamic of like, you know, we want you to fail at times. So then we can kind of allow you to kind of talk through what happened, why it happened, things like that.

[14:42] Ken Willette: So one of the real benefits of immersive learning is it can be available after hours. And the traditional delivery of fire service training is very often through a classroom interaction, instructor led, there can be PowerPoint followed up by drill yard with manual skills being performed. What immersive learning allows for is to focus on only what's absolutely needed to be taught in the classroom and then bring the student to an immersive learning tool to engage and build through sets and reps their ability to be successful for the performance testing that's going to follow. And immersive learning can break down the end skill into many stages and allow the student to perform it repetitively in a safe environment, getting feedback from the instructor or others, Well, here's what you can do better the next time. Here's what you need to do if you're in the real environment, so that they are confident as they move on to the next level of skill, but also as their performance is being tested, that they're confident and they have a better chance of being a successful firefighter. So we think immersive learning and the technology is an enabler to break down the skills, to allow independent sets and reps, as well as observed sets and reps, give constructive feedback and build for success at the ultimate performance.

[16:11] Kevin Sofen: So, Ken, you've been going at this for a couple of years now.

[16:14] Ken Willette: A couple of years.

[16:15] Kevin Sofen: I mean, you've been involved in the fire service and training, but the immersive learning started for you around like 2020 or so?

[16:21] Ken Willette: Yes. Yep.

[16:23] Kevin Sofen: So, going five years at it's 2025. What's your vision for the impact of all this work you've been on in the next 5, 10, you know, future of fire service?

[16:33] Ken Willette: So what I observe happening with the high fidelity immersive learning tools is that they're at that technology adaptation curve that they start and they come out strong and they have a product and they work with the fire service or the consumer and they're building and they're on the uphill side of the slope and to be able to consider themselves a success both financially and programmatically they have to get across that hump and come down the other side meaning that they have an industry acceptance, they have a viable product, and they've got a support base to continue funding the development of the tool and the sustainment of the tool. We are still climbing on that uphill slope. We are still looking to build the momentum behind immersive learning technologies for the fire service. Obviously, cost is always a consideration. For new tech, it's expensive, and those costs have to be supported. companies. Grant funding is essential to the deployment of immersive learning tools and technologies. Fire departments and fire academies on their own are not going to be able to afford the investment for the high fidelity tools. And I think the high fidelity tools are what's going to increase the learning opportunities and really give the return on investment. But we need to have broader acceptance. So what I'm hopeful is this project is going to provide the platform for the a dialogue so that the tools are better developed to meet the needs of fire service training. And it results in the fire service embracing it and saying, this is the way we want to go. Maybe we're not 100% there, but we're closer. We can see the reality. Let's continue supporting it and pushing it up that hill.

[18:12] Kevin Sofen: Well, Ken, well done. You've been a true pioneer with banging the drum here and bringing immersive learning to the forefront. And also kudos and would be remiss without mentioning your other partner in crime, Casey Grant, who was one of the main authors of the research roadmap Future Smart Firefighting. And I think we've seen a lot of aspects that report come to life. And the two that I see becoming more commonplace in the industry are drones. You're seeing that being used in a wide variety of methods, but also immersive learning. And it's no longer just pie in the sky. It's not just cool toys for your kids at Christmas, but there are real tangible benefits and outcomes that are being available today and are only getting stronger. And a lot of it's a testament to you continuing to break some barriers. So thank you, Ken.

[18:56] Ken Willette: Thank you, and thank you, Kevin, for being the advocate and helping us promote this and get the word out there. And your ability to connect people and to set the table for the dialogue, because that's such an important step on moving this forward.

[19:08] Kevin Sofen: Right on. Well, it's been a pleasure and excited to keep it rolling with you.

[19:11] Ken Willette: All right, very good.

[19:12] Kevin Sofen: Thanks, Ken.

[19:13] Ken Willette: Thanks, bud.

[19:14] Kevin Sofen: Appreciate it. Thanks for joining another episode of the Smart Firefighting Podcast. We hope you learned something today and if so, please consider leaving us a review or a comment so we can keep creating the best content for you. Have a great day and thanks for all that you do for public safety.