Applied Crowd Science

G. Keith Still

• Editore: CRC Press
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781351053044
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Politics & International Relations
• Categoria: City Planning & Urban Development

Applied Crowd Science outlines the theory and applications of the crowd safety course that Keith Still has developed and taught worldwide for over thirty years. It includes the background and applications of the crowd risk assessment tools, as well as essays and case studies from international users (UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Holland, Belgium and Japan) -- see Support Material on www.routledge.com/9781138626560. Keith's courses are mandatory training for all UK Police Public Event Commanders.

The text covers legislation and guidance for crowd safety in places of public assembly, and outlines the requirements of a crowd risk assessment for mass gatherings. It draws on Prof. Still's expert witness experience, highlighting both the problems you need to understand for your event planning.

Chapter 1 Virtual learning environment (VLE)

DOI: 10.1201/9781351053068-1

Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.

Louis L’Amour

If you bought this book as a companion to the online learning course, this chapter is a guide to help you through the first logging-in and the learning process. However, if you want to read about the background, the underlying theories, the essays, and case studies, you can skip this chapter.

On our VLE (GKSed.com), we host a Moodle-based series of crowd safety courses. These cover Level 3 and Level 5 qualifications. The crowd science courses are accredited by both the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management¹ and Highfield.² There were over 1,000 learners through the system in 2020 and in 2021, NCS⁴ (University of Southern Mississippi³) partnered with us to launch the USA version of the Level 3 course.

Using the online learning programme

If you have not used an eLearning system before, it is straightforward. Our courses follow the format and structure of the content taught in classroom courses. There are, of course, clear advantages and disadvantages to online learning.

Based on feedback

As the main feedback from our classroom courses was “too much content, not enough time to study each topic”, we developed the online version partly for learners who could not attend a classroom session, but also to aid those who attended the course and wanted to recap and study each topic in depth. Everyone who attends our classroom courses has access to the online version to refer to key learning points, at their own pace.

¹ https://www.iirsm.org ² https://www.highfieldqualifications.com ³ https://ncs4.usm.edu

The significant advantage of online learning is that you can take your time to study the materials and replay any section that has information that might be new to you. In the classroom, it is often difficult to repeat, or expand on a topic, due to time constraints and the presence of other learners. Solo study allows you to learn at your own pace.

To aid the learner, we have forum discussions, question and answers sections, and background reading materials for each topic to compensate for this. If you search back on forum topics or ask a new question, we can post the reply, and everyone receives help from that discussion. However, the first step is to get you online.

You can buy any of our courses via the website (www.crowdrisks.com) or NCS4 in the USA. Once bought, the system <[email protected]> will send you your log-in credentials, along with an email and frequently asked questions. Your username is your email address (all in lowercase), and your password is a string of random symbols sent on the registration email.

Use those two bits of information to log into GKSed.com for the first time. It will prompt you to change your password (which is a regular prompt, every few weeks for obvious security reasons).

Initial registration

Once you log in and change your password, which is the first screen you will see. You will find that the courses that you have bought as the blue sections. These are the hyperlinked. So, if you click on (say) the Introduction to Crowd Science block it will take you into the course area. You then have a series of options where you can scroll down (on the left-hand side) the various course elements and topics (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Introduction screen on the VLE.

In each of the sub-sections, and each of the modules you will find the content. For example, “Lectures” is the area where you can view the lecture videos. The menu and content are structured, so best start at the beginning and work your way down, and through the content.

You can download the PDF’s⁴ of the lecture slides, support documents, either by topic or all at once. For example, in the topic associated with risk analysis, you will find various documents on risk analysis. In the folder on site design, you will find the documents on site design. We update the documents with the latest information, new case studies and when new papers are published.

⁴ Portable document format – an adobe format which you can view/read on your own computer or print out for reference.

There are sub-sections for forum discussions, where you can post information about any specific topic. The little blue and green bubbles speech bubbles allow you to create a discussion topic, ask a question, post information that fellow students can share, post documents, and request details for information. We will get back to you within a couple of hours of you posting questions because these go straight to the moderators of the various forums.

In the lecture’s sections, you will find a playlist. You play all the videos on that list or stop and start when you want. This works on mobile devices, on laptops, and desktops. You can use the sidebar to navigate through the learning programme.

There is a search facility to allow you to access the various forums. There are various menu options on the left-hand side of the screen to allow you to skip to a topic. As we cover each topic in depth, (more than we can deliver in a classroom environment) you can ask any questions on any course topic, post those to the forum, use the forum discussion, see previously asked questions, and take part in the conversations.

Assessments and certificates

The level 3 course, Fundamentals of Crowd Safety, has a 60-day access. To pass this course, there is a timed (1 hour) multiple choice quiz to pass. There is a bank of random questions, in a random order, which relate to the course materials, and you need to achieve more than 80% to pass. You have three attempts, and you need to click on the “Check” button to register your answer. Some questions have a weighting (a scale of correct) and some need multiple answers. The system produces a certificate that you can download. Each certificate has a unique code, which future employers can cross check your qualifications. We also send each pass to the awarding body, for your Level 3 certificate. We email those to you and again, they have a unique number for cross checking should you lose the original.

The level 5 course, Introduction to Crowd Science, the certificate, is based on two written assessments. The first is an essay on the general discussion on th...