Brainband Builds Emergency Management Course Using Virtual Reality

DALLAS – Creating effective professional training for emergency management positions require role-play to teach employees how to respond in certain situations, but building real-world scenarios can be quite costly and isn’t always realistically possible. To answer this challenge, Brainband Technology Services has created a new Emergency Management online course that integrates Second Life, today’s most popular virtual reality software, into training.

Brainband built the course combining online presentations, interactive activities and Second Life animation to visually demonstrate defensive actions in crisis situations and put course participants at the front line of emergency management. The course is designed primarily for professionals in law enforcement and emergency response teams, as well as professionals looking to enter the field. The virtual reality scenarios engage course participants in real-life experiences and lead them through a disaster where they can assume different roles and answer questions about how to proceed. In addition, participants will also work one-on-one with their expert facilitator on essay-style activities that require in-depth responses to the emergency situations. Upon successful completion of Brainband’s new course, professionals will be able to effectively respond to various threats, identify and assess risk and vulnerability of hazards, and provide care for those who have been affected.

“Our emergency management course utilizes virtual reality scenarios that immerse professionals into real-life experiences, thus enhancing their learning experience,” said Dave Livingston, chief technology officer of Brainband Technology Services. “Second Life offers a cost-effective way to present instructional scenarios rather than trying to create them through traditional movie making, custom animation or 3-D gaming.”

The Emergency Management training course is available through Gatlin Education Services and can be found at partnering colleges and universities nationwide.

About Brainband Technology Services:
Dallas-based Brainband Technology Services provides information technology consulting, web application development, multi-media production services, web hosting, wireless internet connectivity and its featured product, Blogfusion, a system where multiple people blogging on a similar subject have their posts aggregated on a single portal Web page, creating a ‘community’ of bloggers.

Specializing in online course development, Brainband has built learning management systems and comprehensive training courseware for e-learning providers like Gatlin International and WorldEducation.net. The company provides an entire functioning package including counseling on authoring tools and hosting servers for course delivery.