This article appeared in the December issue of Campus Firewatch along with Web 2.0 Glossary

Teaching fire safety to college-age students is always a challenge for a number of reasons and probably the leading one is making it relevant and important to them because they have a sense of invulnerability (it won’t happen to me).  Another factor is that often fire safety education stops when they are very young so there is the perception that fire safety is something for kids and not relevant to them.

In a study conducted by Campus Firewatch and the People’s Burn Foundation, students didn’t realize how much they were now responsible for fire safety, which was something that their parents had always taken care of before.  Once they realized how much of a knowledge gap they had they became very interested in learning more.  (Unfortunately, there wasn’t a student-centric source of information to direct them to which led to the development of www.igot2kno.org.)

Overcoming these attitudes is only a part of the problem, however.  While it has always been important to make the training interesting, informative and engaging, with this generation this is a tremendous challenge because of how they learn, which is dramatically different from previous generations.  Generation X, the Net Gen(eration), the Millennials – whatever you want to call them – they are children of the Internet.  For those of us of the Baby Boomer generation, the Internet is something that we saw develop and grow, albeit over a very short period of time.  I am still amazed at what it can do and whenever a new application of the Web pops up, I find it almost magical at times.  Not so, with the Net Gen.  The Internet is to them what television or the telephone is to my generation.  It has always been there and there is nothing special about it.  When asked the question, “would you rather live without television or the Internet,” 77 percent of Net Geners said they would chose to live without television as reported in the book Grown up Digital by Don Tapscott.  The Net Gen is surrounded by information or, as Tapscott says, “bathed in bits.”

In discussions with campus fire safety officers, the common lament is that they are not given enough (or any) access to the students to deliver the traditional classroom-style training.  While face-to-face training may be highly effective, is it the most effective method with this generation?  By “effective” I mean 1) will it engage the student, 2) will they retain the information and 3) will you reach the widest possible audience?  Is it better to have only 20 minutes, along with a host of other speakers, and give a diluted fire safety talk or to look for some creative alternative?  Instead of looking at the lack of adequate access to the entire student body as a negative, this should perhaps be looked at as an opportunity.

This has significant ramifications for delivering fire safety information.  When offered the choice of delivering a fire safety program that is available for free over the Internet or using a DVD and doing a traditional presentation, a number of fire safety educators on campuses are choosing the DVD.  This may be because they have been doing it this way for many years and are comfortable doing it this way, but it may be contrary to how to reach the widest possible audience effectively in today’s Internet-based world. 

Makeup of today’s Net Generation

In doing research for this article I came across a large body of information and studies about Internet usage on campuses and by students and teenagers.  What was interesting was how fast the profile changed – research conducted in 2004 was already out of date and was contradicted by studies from 2008.  Trend lines are becoming shorter in the fast-paced world of the Internet.  For example, in a 2004 study, email was listed as a highly-used method of communication.  In 2008, “email is for old people” said one student.

A study by Educause was published in October 2008 provides an interesting overview on how intensely students use the Internet.  This study was based on a literature search, a web-based survey of 24,000 freshmen and seniors at 90 colleges and universities, focus groups at four schools and analysis of 5,877 open-ended responses to survey questions.

• Over 80% own laptops, 54% own desktops and 1/3 own both
• Laptop ownership has increased from 66% in 2006 to 82% in 2008
• Over 66% own internet-capable cell phones
• The respondents spend an average of 20 hours per week online (work, school or recreation usages)
• A little over 7% spend more than 40 hours per week
• Approximately 33% use audio- or video-creation software
• Approximately 33% engage in online multiuser computer games such as World of Warcraft
• Over 33% contribute content to blogs, wikis, etc.
• Over 85% use social networking sites (SNS)
• The number of students that use SNSs increased markedly from 75% in 2006 to 89% in 2008
• The number that use SNSs daily has increased dramatically from 33% in 2006 to 59% in 2008
• Younger students use social networking sites, text messaging and instant messaging more than older students.
• Facebook is used by 89% of the students and MySpace by 48%

Today’s students are more wired, are using cutting edge platforms and are going more mobile than in the past.  Mobile phones, iPods, laptop computers are the communications mechanisms of choice.  Access to the Internet is becoming more ubiquitous with the growth of wireless connectivity, from the dorm room to the coffee shop.  Indeed, with the proliferation of broadband-via-cellular, the Web is everywhere.

Web 2.0

Today’s Internet is all about the user developing content.  Web 2.0 is the common phrase being used to explain an Internet where the user can create content and this is being done at an unprecedented rate.  One of the best examples is Wikipedia where, according to the website, 75,000 active contributors have developed 10 million articles.  Over 684 million people visit Wikipedia annually and make tens of thousands of edits.  The “old Internet” was about clicking and reading.  Today’s Internet is about creating and posting content, whether it is text in a blog or a video on YouTube.

And this is only going to increase with the incoming students.

According to the study Teens and Social Media by the Pew Internet & American Life Project published in December 2007:  (What is telling is that these statistics are as of November 2006.  I would have to believe that the statistics given are increasing rapidly and are probably higher today.)

• Approximately 93% of teens (12 to 17) use the Internet
• Daily usage has increased from 42% in 2000 to 61% in 2006
• 34% use the Internet multiple times per day
• 64% of the online teens are content creators
• 39% of online teens post artwork, photos, stories or videos (an increase from 33% in 2004)
• 28% have created an online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004
• 27% have their own personal webpage, an increase from 22% in 2004
• More girls (35%) create blogs than boys (20%)
• More boys (19%) post videos on websites such as YouTube than girls (10%)

This report had interesting findings regarding how teens communicate with their peers.

Despite the power that email holds among adults as a major mode of personal and professional communication, it is not a particularly important part of the communication arsenal of today’s teens.  Only 14% of all teens report sending emails to their friend every day, making it the least popular form of daily social communication on the list we queried.  Even among multi-channel teens, who are more likely to take advantage of any communication channel they have access to, just 22% say they send email to their friends daily.

When teens are asked to rank how they communicate with friends (landline telephones, cell phone, face-to-face, text messaging, instant messaging, SNS, email), email consistently ranks last among the different groups.

Blogging had increased dramatically from 19% in 2004 to 28% in 2006 with schools using blogs as part of their curriculums.  There has been a significant increase (from 38% to 49%) of teens that read blogs as well.

What does this mean for the campus fire safety professional?

The Internet is where more and more students are turning for information and interaction.  The value of the Internet was affirmed during the recent Obama presidential campaign which made extensive use of such sites as Facebook and Twitter and raised over $500 million in online contributions, according to some reports.

There has been an explosive growth in tools to create online content (Wikipedia, blogs, Facebook, etc) that today’s college students (and soon-to-be students) are using extensively.  There are now over 130 million Facebook users who spend 2.6 billion minutes on there each day, worldwide, according to Facebook.

Students automatically turn to the social networking sites to communicate widely during emergencies or after tragedies.  As the shootings were unfolding at Virginia Tech in 2007, students were creating Facebook sites and constantly updating information.  In several cases, after a student has been killed in a campus-related fire, Facebook pages are created in memory of the victims, such as the one for Peter Talen who was killed in a fire in Wisconsin or following the 2007 fire in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, that killed seven students.

With students so comfortable with creating content on their own, they have high expectations when it comes to reading and viewing content created by others.  Remember, they are being inundated with information so is important is to create engaging content and to not just make online versions of fire safety brochures or to just post policies and procedures on the Web – this is not effective in the day and age of Web 2.0 if you want to attract an audience of young people that are used to interacting with highly creative websites and content.

One of the possible solutions to this dilemma is that of involving the students themselves in developing the content and the programs to deliver to their peers.  When this idea is broached with some fire safety educators they have a fear of the style that will be used based on what is popular on YouTube.  Given that fire safety is a serious topic, they are hesitant to embrace a style that may trivialize its importance or use formats or genres that are not appropriate to the topic.  However, if it is a choice between getting information into the hands of the students or not using a video, for example, that is “edgy,” perhaps we should lean towards getting the information into the hands of the students, no matter the mechanism.

Also, the Internet should not be viewed as a “magic bullet” in reaching the students.  In surveys of students about the use and effectiveness of technology in the classroom, they report that it is a useful adjunct, but not a replacement, for teaching.  Face-to-face is still a valuable component that cannot necessarily be replaced or replicated through the Internet.  For this reason, an effective fire safety campaign should include the Internet as a mechanism for reaching the students but should not be relied upon as the sole method.

Web-based resources

Integrating the Internet into any type of education is unquestionably an effective tactic, and just as much in fire safety as well.  Unfortunately, the resources, particularly for the college-age student, are few and far between.  Recently, Campus Firewatch worked with the People’s Burn Foundation on developing the program “To Hell and Back: College Fire Survival” that was integrated into an online site www.igot2kno.org.  This was developed under a DHS Fire Prevention and Safety Grant and is freely available for any campus or community fire official to use.  The site is designed so that it can be offered to students as an online training program with a pre-test, video and post-test.  Schools can sign up through PBF

Another example of using the Internet for outreach is the site www.thisshouldbeillegal.com that was developed by the Washington, DC, Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (see the article in this issue for more information on this website).  Developed with students in mind, this site resides on Facebook and uses the free resources provided by Facebook to create an engaging and informative site.  In the United Kingdom, for Campus Fire Safety Month, the Cheshire Fire Brigade in conjunction with Cheshire University developed a series of sites on MySpace, Facebook and Bebo called “Before you pull” that contained information about fire safety along with links on how to obtain free smoke alarms.

Where do we go from here?

I recently attended a symposium on the next 25 years of fire protection.  There were a number of outstanding presentations on issues such as how the demographics in our country are changing, the future trends in building construction and materials and much more.  However, what was interesting (and telling) about this two-day program was not what was on the screen but the audience.  In looking around the room, I would estimate that the average age of the approximately 150 people in attendance was about 45, if not older, and this was a topic of several off-line discussions – and one of concern.

What we really need is a massive shift from today’s methodology of relying on older mechanisms of delivering fire safety information to today’s wired Net Generation.  We need to embrace the Internet and all that it has to offer in terms of outreach – and quickly given the rapid pace of change that is occurring on the Internet. 

There are certainly people and organizations using the Internet and using it effectively for fire safety, but the concern is that it may not be happening quickly or broadly enough.  And, are we too entrenched in our existing ways of thinking to embrace this change?  To make the changes and use the resources available to us, we need to bring in today’s youth to develop the tools we need.

As the adage goes, “time will tell,” but given the incredibly fast pace of change that we are experiencing, we may not have the luxury of time.