Exercises

Definition

Exercises have been widely used in complex and diverse disciplines, for example, hunting and fighting skills, airplane performance simulations, and current classroom exercises for school students. Canada, Australia, and the United States tend to use drills, while European countries refer to them as simulations. Exercises can be defined as one of the training methods that represent a selected feature of a real and dynamic situation, replicating it within a risk-free environment within which trainees are placed to cope with particular challenges that improve learning outcomes.

The United Kingdom (UK) Cabinet Office describes an exercise as the simulation of an emergency that is used to “validate plans (validation); [Page 387]to develop staff competencies and to give them practice in carrying out their roles in the plans (training); and to test well-established procedures (testing).” Ideally, those involved in the exercises should be trained beforehand. At the same time, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also defines an exercise as “an activity designed to promote preparations for emergency situations in order to test operations, policies, plans, procedures or equipment, or to demonstrate the capability to respond to a crisis.” In any case, the aim of exercises is to use more frequent, constant, and broad variety types of training methods to improve and retain staff knowledge and skills that are related to preparing for and responding to accidental or crisis situations.

The UK Home Office categorizes exercises into four types: (1) discussion-based seminar and/or scenarios, (2) tabletop (multidiscipline, single-agency, and management-level role-play), (3) control post, and (4) live exercises (small-scale-single-agency to test one component or full-scale-multi-agency to test the whole response to an incident). The FEMA further divides exercises into drills, functions, and full-scale. There is also a trend to include information technology (IT)-based exercises in the discussion.

Skills to be Trained during an Exercise

An exercise is a useful tool to provide repeated learning by individuals, teams, and organizations involved in a crisis event for how to prevent or deal with disruptive situations. Exercises also provide a platform for participants to develop a more detailed understanding of decision criteria, decision-making processes, organizational cultures, formal and informal communication structures, multiagency response mechanisms, and associated strategic issues. From a pedagogical perspective, exercises address adult learners’ preference for active and experience-centered learning and opportunities for more inductive or guided-discovery learning approaches with flexibility for the incorporation of error-based learning that must be otherwise avoided in real crisis events. Training for crisis is unique in its need to simulate high levels of nonroutine, uncertain, and complex problem solving needing urgent action and intricate patterns of intra- and interagency decision making and communications.

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