Impact of Online Learning on Emergency Response: An Evaluation of an Online Course

The National Center for Disaster Preparedness has been conducting an ongoing evaluation of its online Public Health Basic Emergency Preparedness course, which has been completed by more than 15,000 public health workers in all 50 U.S. states since 2002. This study explores the following questions: In what capacities are public health workers who have taken this course involved in disaster response? Has this course helped public health workers to be more effective in actual disaster situations? In order to answer these questions, an online survey will be distributed in March, 2010 to all previous course participants. In particular, we seek to examine what the prevalence is of participants who encountered a disaster response as part of their job, the types of disasters they may have encountered, and where these disaster responses have occurred. Ultimately, it is our goal to decipher whether performance on the online course, as based on the difference in pre and post test scores, significantly predicts learner performance in actual disaster settings. An analysis conducted through multiple regression and contingency tables will be presented.