CWDM Fire Training Academy first in world to go digital!
The Cape Winelands District Municipality’s (CWDM’s) Fire Services are well-known throughout South Africa and in many other countries for their fire-fighting skills. What few people realise is that the CWDM Fire Services are also recognised for the excellent training offered at the CWDM Fire Academy.
During the past 18 years over 7000 fire fighters have attended one or more of the academy’s eight training courses. Fire Fighters from across all disciplines attend the academy, engaging in both practical and theoretical training before writing exams.
Gone are the days of spending hours setting up exams and tests and then more hours marking them, hand collating papers to find common areas that need more attention and manually extracting data for reporting. Together with Professor Wilfred Fritz, a retired electrical engineer and Solomon Smit a previous student of the professor’s, the academy has, over the last four years, developed a digital training management system, that eliminates all the tedious administrative work relating to examinations. As an added benefit the Alpha Tower, is a closed circuit portable stand-alone training management system. The system can be adapted to any form of academic training and in its current configuration can be utilized by all fire departments.
“This is the first digital training management system of its sort in the world! The Alpha Tower was piloted over a four-year period and with the support of SAESI and in full collaboration with the academy to ensure that it is fully compatible unit that has its own supply of Wi-Fi.” Stated Solomon Smit of Alpha Tower, one of the developers.
The system makes use of tablets that are linked via a closed internet system (similar to a Local Access Network – LAN), which can manage up to 70 students at a time. Furthermore, the system makes provision for confidentiality and includes fail-safes to prevent plagiarism and/or cheating. The system also allows Trainers (and teachers) to upload their material and examination papers, from where they can select the various questions to set up their exams and tests. Furthermore, the result of the examination is available to the student and the lecturer immediately offering immediate feedback allowing for improved planning.
In addition to the already long list of advantages, is that the system can extract reports and analytical data that can assist with reporting and planning for future classes.
The Alpha Tower is compatible to all forms of training and education platforms. The event was attended by guests from fellow fire stations, as well as a number of guests from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Germany, the USA and our neighboring countries who attended the event virtually.
