Maintaining Attention on Health and Safety Courses

The topic of health and safety is, for many people, not the most thrilling and exciting of subjects. This means that there is great potential for a person attending a health and safety training course to lose concentration and switch off during the session. If they do, it is highly probable that they will miss some vital information that they will need for at least one of the two reasons below (but usually both!):

1. They will require the information for the assessment at the end. This is especially true of comprehensive health and safety qualifications such as the NEBOSH General Certificate which require a delegate to pass all of the assessments before they are awarded with the qualification. It is for this reason that the skill and ability of the course tutor can have such a tremendous effect upon candidate pass rates, as being able to keep a person interested on a health and safety course like the NEBOSH General Certificate course is a critical aspect of effective training sessions, and is why e-learning is not a good format for taking such large qualifications which normally require many days of classroom-based training.

2. Whilst passing assessments and achieving a qualification is the short-term goal, it needs to be remembered that the whole purpose of health and safety training is to create a safer place of work through educating individuals. Therefore not only will the information missed by the person who loses their attention affect their chances of success when it comes to exam time, but they will also not have this information to apply when back in the workplace to prevent an accident which can cause injury, ill-health or death either to themselves or others in the vicinity.

E-learning and Health & Safety Courses

Already mention in point one above is that e-learning courses are often not suitable for large health and safety qualifications. Their popularity has grown over recent years as they are normally much cheaper and have the benefit of being done in a person's own time and in front of their own computer, but that can also be one of their biggest downfalls. With a course such as the NEBOSH General Certificate which is usually run 9am-5pm for ten days, this time will need to be completed in front of a computer screen, which will place a great strain on a person's eyes. They are therefore likely to spread it out over a long period of time, which makes retaining and recalling the information less likely when it comes to the assessments. Plus they will have all the distractions of home life around them such as television and children whilst they are trying to study.

So whilst e-learning courses may be suitable as an alternative to short one-day courses they are not recommended for lengthy ones such as a NEBOSH General Certificate for those who are serious about passing the assessments and achieving the qualification. Even though e-learning courses may be half the cost, it is still a lot of money to waste on something which will in all likelihood not give you the accredited qualification at the end after putting in time and effort.