Training & Learning Evaluation Frameworks: Monitoring Skills & Knowledge Audits

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This is a project within the multi-disciplinary EPSRC and ESRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) on Quantification and Management of Risk & Uncertainty in Complex Systems & Environments, within the Institute for Risk and Uncertainty. The studentship is granted for 4 years and includes, in the first year, a Master in Decision Making under Risk & Uncertainty. The project includes extensive collaboration with prime industry to build an optimal basis for employability.

Objectives
Responding to ever-increasing demands on resources within the security services, it is essential for individual units to have a clear assessment of their internal human resources and expertise. While training and deployment can help maintain a certain standard within specialist units, it is essential to build a robust evaluation framework that makes it possible to map and track the professional development. This should be done at various levels for each individual, making sure that overall resilience and capabilities are captured, while also helping in identifying areas for further development and training.

The Critical and Major Incident (CAMI) research group has been involved in the development and delivery of a number of training and knowledge exchange initiatives, looking at bringing empirical tested solutions to problems faced by the security services. This has resulted in partnerships with specialist units within individual services, and the building of robust learning and training inputs. The most significant of these have included:

ORBIT – Development of a rapport based framework for interviewing high value detainees regarding security threats, and the incorporation of this framework into the national counter terrorism interview training.

Critical Incident Decision Making – Development of evaluative programmes to be deployed during large-scale multiagency exercises, which allow for the monitoring and capture of performance at the tactical and strategic level.

7@7 – Development of a cost-effective operational engagement programme that can be incorporated into existing professional frameworks and procedures.

KIRAT – Development of a risk assessment tool to identify likely contact offenders, and the related national pyramid training for officers.

Each of these, while focused on the front-end delivery of training and working towards accelerating individuals’ expertise, has lacked a more robust evaluation and monitoring frameworks. The goal of this project is to develop a number of scalable evaluative templates, drawing from the learning, organisational and educational literature. This would ensure further support for the individual training inputs, while also providing a long-term and accountable record of each agency’s in-house expertise, informing their engagement, resourcing and development needs. This will also feed into a sustainable skills audit, with a view towards developing accompanying applications, software and transferable evaluation frameworks.

Impact
With limited resources, funding, and time available to invest in professional development, it is important for the agencies and the relevant sources of expertise to target their needs and requirements in the most effective way possible. Short of creating consequential learning environments, this framework would provide an internal measure of the specialist training provisions, while building of a sustainable and transferable assessment framework. In the long-term, after robust testing and assessment of their validity, the goal would be to incorporate these evaluative frameworks into trainer packages owned by the individual agencies, based on which they can better target their budgets, professional development and training provisions.


To be located at the UoL’s London Campus, as part of the CAMI Policing Academy.