Course Details

After successfully completing this course, you will be able to

• CO-1: Determine how the origins of the modern Incident Safety Officer effects how the job is seen today in the eyes of the firefighter and the general public.
• CO-2: Interpret how the divergence of the role of the Incident Safety Officer in modern fire departments affects the safety of a fire department.
• CO-3: Determine the need for a functional Incident Safety Officer in the fire service.
• CO-4: Identify the laws, standards, and regulations that guide the formulation of fire service safety practices.
• CO-5: Discuss the foundational knowledge and skills required for effective performance in the Incident Safety Officer role.
• CO-6: Examine and explain various safety issues facing the modern fire service.
• CO-7: Determine the need for the investigation of and the application of lessons learned from fire service death and injury investigations.
• CO-8: Identify the functions of the Incident Safety Officer in training, education, and post-incident activities.

Readings:
The textbook and several additional readings will be covered throughout this eight week (8) course. As a student, you are expected to read each of the assigned readings and complete the corresponding assignment. The assignments vary from writing papers, creating presentations, and conducting field observations. Throughout the course, you should keep one thought in mind. Earning a college degree requires you to expand your thinking and familiarize you with the literature in the fire service field. Thus, when completing assignments you need to ground your thoughts and summations using the literature so as to demonstrate that you have conducted the necessary review of the literature and to show others where they may find that material. As this course is about learning the field's literature, personal opinions not based or supported by the published literature are not acceptable. All writing assignments to include Forum assignments require researching the academic literature and utilizing citations and a reference page. Your success in this course is based on your command of the field's literature and your ability to communicate that grasp of the literature to diverse audiences. As this course is designed to familiarize you with the field's literature, there are no wrong or right answers; there are just complete and incomplete answers.

Note: You must ALWAYS comply with the course writing standards, as they are outlined in the course announcements.

Forum Participation:

There are various required discussion Forum assignments. For most Forum assignments you are required to post 350 words concerning the assigned readings. The Forum includes extension research reply assignments. The research assignments require you to do additional research concerning the corresponding readings and your peer's postings. For all Forum postings, a complete post will include adherence to the posted writing standards. The key is to be thorough and use your academic voice to ground your summations using the literature!

Keep in mind that all assignments are designed to sharpen your writing skills and your research skills and as such all writing assignments require providing additional research that support your conclusions. Thus, you will always need to include citations in APA Style (Sixth Edition); however, instead of a References page you may put the bibliographic entries corresponding to your in-text citations at the bottom of each post.

Each Forum assignment will require you to respond to at least two classmate postings in order to earn full credit for the Forum.

Note: You must comply with the course writing standards as they are outlined in the course announcements.

Weekly Review Questions:

You will have Weekly Review Questions that are short answer assignments from the Review Questions at the end of the assigned reading chapters for the week. Please indicate which chapter and question you are answering in your responses. Be sure to include your name on your submission and list your references on the Review Question Assignments.

Mid-Term Examination:

You will have a Mid-Term Examination in Week 4 consisting of 25 multiple-choice questions. The Mid-Term Examination is open-book with no time limits and is designed to check your understanding of key course concepts. Information will come from Chapters 1-9 in the Dodson text.

Final Examination:

You will have a Final Examination in Week 7 consisting of consisting of 30 multiple-choice questions. The Final Examination is open-book with no time limits and is designed to check your understanding of key course concepts. Information will come from Chapters 10-17 in the Dodson text.

Research Paper:

Complete a research paper based on one (or more) of the NIOSH Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program reports or a local incident or incidents. That impacted on the way the fire service “does business.” As a guide, consider the following questions. What was the effect of this death on the fire service as a whole? Was the effect permanent? Did it produce legislation? How did it affect your department? Where are legislation and legal cases going in this area? How did it change, or not change your own department? Insure that you review what impact this has had on SOP’s, procedures, rules and regulations were in place to prevent this. Was ICS functioning? What changes have been made and what additional ones would you recommend to improve safety procedures in your department?

This project is due by the end of the course. By Week 2, you must submit your topic under Assignments. Include the topic and your proposed approach to it - you must get my approval before proceeding.

There is no required length for this paper, but I expect the paper to be complete. Typically, a term paper in this course will have 10-12 double-spaced pages in the body of its text not counting the title page and References page(s). You must include at least 10 sources in addition to sources in the assigned reading.

The term paper will be graded by the provided rubric located in the assignment section of your assignments section (See: term paper assignment for details).

Your term paper must be formatted in conformance to APA Style (Sixth Edition). You can find the APA Style guide in the APUS Online Library. No other formatting and citation style will be accepted.

Additional Readings

Writing Style Guide: The following guide must be used for all written assignments and can be found in the resources folder.

American Psychological Association. (2009). Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

The readings that will be used throughout the course are provided in the Resources section of the classroom, in the course lessons, and one the associated assignment or forum.

Web Sites

In addition to the required course texts, the following public domain web sites are useful. Please abide by the university’s academic honesty policy when using Internet sources as well. Note web site addresses are subject to change.