Welcome

Maggie Hill: All right, it’s right on 6 pm, so we might make a start. Hello everyone, my name’s Maggie Hill and I’ll be hosting this evening’s webinar, which is focused on QUT Online’s Graduate Certificate in Emergency and Disaster Management. This webinar provides an overview of the course from both academic and practical perspectives.

Before we begin, I want to let you know that the session is being recorded and it will be made available on the QUT Online website at a later date. I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we meet today, as well as the Turrbal and Yugara people, the First Nations Owners of the lands where QUT now stands. I pay my respects to elders past and present and acknowledge the important role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to play in the knowledge leadership and care of communities.

So today’s webinar, this webinar is designed to help you decide whether the Graduate Certificate in Emergency and Disaster Management is the right fit for your goals. During the webinar, you’ll learn more about both the academic content and learning outcomes, as well as the practicalities of studying this course online. Here’s what we’ll cover.

We’ve got Dr Sam Tolu, who’s going to provide us with a snapshot of the course and the careers and roles it supports. We’ll have a conversation with him about course content, learning outcomes, and the skills that matter in emergencies and recovery. We’ll then be joined by one of the course online learning advisors, Sergeant Patrick Hayes, who will talk about the practical experience of studying online and what you can expect from a day-to-day perspective.

Sergeant Hayes will also share how his direct experience working in emergencies has helped in his role supporting students in this course. And I want everyone to finish tonight’s session with all their burning questions answered. We’ll then have the opportunity for a Q&A session, and you can pop your questions into the Q&A function now, and we’ll get to them at the end of the webinar.

Dr Sam Tolu’s introduction

It’s now time to welcome our first speaker, Dr Sam Tolu. Dr Tolu is a health sociologist in QUT’s Faculty of Health. His work focuses on community and consumer perspectives across health services, disasters and climate change.

His research has informed health and disaster risk reduction policy in Australia and globally. Sam coordinates postgraduate courses in health systems, health policy and emergency management. Dr Tolu, thanks for being here.

We’re looking forward to hearing more from you about the Graduate Certificate in Emergency and Disaster Management. Let’s start by talking about what we’re seeing in Australia when it comes to emergency and disaster management. We know that emergencies are becoming more frequent and complex.

The shift in emergency and disaster management

Maggie Hill: What pressure does this place on health systems and communities, both immediately and over the longer term?

Dr Sam Tolu: Good evening, everyone and thank you, Maggie, for the introduction and also for this opportunity. Let me start by saying that disasters are called disasters because they impact our lives to a large extent. So a tornado, for example, in the middle of nowhere is just a natural hazard or a phenomenon.

But when it affects us, affects our communities, uproots our houses and our livelihoods, injures, kills people, then it becomes a disaster. What’s happening basically, what we are seeing is that we are seeing more severe disasters happening, sometimes multiple hazards at the same time, and then the ripple effects and the cascading effects. And that becomes a problem for our systems, not just the health system, but all other systems can also be affected.

So in the short term, we see death, injuries, potentially infectious diseases and mental distress, psychological distress. But long-term impacts can be very considerable. We did long-term research on the long-term impacts of the 2011 floods.

And even after seven years, many people were still dealing with the psychological impacts, insurance impacts, and financial impacts of the disaster. So what we can see in the long-term would be like disabilities, mental health issues, chronic diseases that have gone through gaps in managing them, negative impacts on the budget, on the finance and economy and the development projects because the money needs to go somewhere else. And also increasing inequity and vulnerabilities in the community on our social cohesion.

A very clear example of that would be COVID-19, which is in the living memory of almost everyone that we can see. And it affected almost every corner of the globe and every corner of our systems, our societies, from economy to environment to social and behavioural aspects and our interactions with others, our simple lifestyles, our supply chains, everywhere, our education system, as well as the healthcare delivery and health systems. What we are trying to achieve is systems thinking to look at it from a holistic perspective, which is the basic focus of our course.

Basically, we try to promote a systems view of disasters and look at it from that perspective. Fantastic. Thank you.

Critical roles in the industry

Maggie Hill: What roles in the health and emergency ecosystem are critical in both responding to this increasing frequency? And I’m keen to hear about roles that people might not think of, some of those behind-the-scenes roles as well. That’s a good question. Usually, that’s really what we see on the ground.

Dr Sam Tolu: We see volunteers, we see SES people, for example, we see police, ‘fireys’, and also a little bit off the sides, we can see people in the health system, emergency departments, ambulance, mental health people, clinicians, social workers. But really, this is just the facade of it. And behind the scenes, lots of people have been working across the whole continuum and spectrum of disaster planning, preparedness, response and recovery.

What we see is just the response phase, when something happens, immediately, people are out there to respond. But beforehand, lots of work goes into preparing the communities, planning for how to respond. Without that, we won’t be able to really coordinate among agencies and organisations that need to be involved.

And then after it’s finished, the long-term recovery tail starts. We won’t see any of that on the ground; it goes behind the scenes. There will be a lot of people who work in the office or on the ground outside that immediate acute phase, for example, emergency and disaster management officers or teams that are like in Brisbane, we have the scheduled centre where people are sitting in the control centre.

We have people at the national level, the national emergency management agency, who basically go with the policies, frameworks, legislation, lots of coordination around the states and also people in the local government councils who work in this area, especially with educating people, community preparedness, community festivals and places where people are also giving away information, workshops with people. We have public health officers, for example, epidemiologists who work behind the scenes when it is needed. Lots of work in logistics, supply chain, procurement teams, IT, digital infrastructure, there are lots of especially with the current environment, with cybersecurity being also an issue with disasters and so on.

All of that work goes behind the scenes. Communications and community liaison officers, people who are also behind the scenes, especially when it comes to warnings, messages around during disasters. Also, afterwards, when we see disaster recovery officers working on long-term projects to rebuild, basically not just the physical infrastructure, but also resilience within the communities, within the schools, with families and wherever there is work needed, there will be some people who have to take that load and do it and take it.

Skills needed to succeed

Maggie Hill: Can you talk to us about the skills that these professionals need to be effective, both in an emergency and after an event?

Dr Sam Tolu: We have two sets of people and skills and expertise. At the specialist level, we have people whose role is basically to deal with these works, like clinicians, emergency staff, ambulance paramedics, logistics or IT specialists that I mentioned, and engineers who are building dams and infrastructure.

All of those are specialists dealing with disasters in one way or another. But there are also specific skills that every single person who works in this environment somehow needs to have to some degree. A lot of it would be soft skills, but also a lot of knowledge that needs to be embedded as part of your everyday work if you’re working in this environment, or even if you occasionally or accidentally step into these types of roles.

For example, as a leader, you have to have that kind of strategic leadership, a vision, a long-term vision to be able to see where things are and where things go. If you don’t get stuck in the middle of a disaster response, you have to see before, during and after. So, you have to hold perspective, that holistic vision that I mentioned.

You have to have knowledge of the policies and legislation. It’s very important. You have to have up-to-date knowledge of the current approaches to disaster management.

In the past, the traditional approach was ‘response’ and mostly was a top-down approach, but now we have community-based disaster management. So, those kinds of skills are really important. So, in addition to that, command and control systems and knowledge of these kinds of things, you have to have an understanding of the psychosocial and cultural factors.

You have to understand the communications and public relations methods and mechanisms, how to work with people, how to talk to people, how to communicate with them, especially when there is a situation, a distressful situation. You have to care and be passionate in this environment. You work with people, you serve people.

That’s, I think, the main thing. You have to have that positive attitude. Working in this environment could be extremely rewarding and, at the same time, extremely stressful.

So, if you’re not passionate, you won’t last long. So, in this environment, I would say, if you want to be an effective manager or a leader long-term, you have to be able to work under stress. You have to be able to do teamwork to be part of the team.

You have to be able to make rapid decisions, manage stress, and be able to really work in this type of environment. There are lots of things, I guess, but there is a great degree of support in these environments as well. So, once you’re in, I see a lot of people who just step into this type of work, and they never leave.

The benefit of postgraduate education in this field

Maggie Hill: Yeah, fantastic. So, strategic leadership, long-term vision, you know, decision-making, stress management.

How does a graduate certificate in emergency and disaster management help students develop these skills, and more so, can they be effective and lead during these events?

Dr Sam Tolu: What we did before we started this course was research to find out more about what core skills and knowledge or competencies would help disaster management and disaster managers. We came up with a generic emergency and disaster management standard that’s been published. So, what we found was that we needed to focus on three domains: knowledge, skills, and application.

There are three main domains and under each, there are topics like governance and policy frameworks under the knowledge domain, for example, theoretical and conceptual basis for the kind of practise, and knowledge of the contemporary disaster management principles and processes and approaches. In the skills domain, we need to consider issues like leadership, communication, and collaboration, those kinds of issues that I mentioned. And also, in terms of application, the professional practise and critical thinking are the main areas that we came up with.

So, what we did was to design the course based around these main domains and principles. And we have four units in this whole course that start with an introductory knowledge-based foundation, talk about risk assessment, risk management, research strategies, and then we move on and also basic principles of that, the concepts that we use in this environment, the frameworks that are available. And then in the consequent units, we talk about planning and preparedness, response and recovery, and eventually into leadership kind of characteristics and skills building, which talks a lot more about in terms of communications and coordination skills.

During these courses, in these courses, we do a lot of role playing, we do a lot of exercises, there are lots of case studies to help students, in addition to general knowledge and references that they use. There are also a lot of these kinds of activities. And we also have authentic assignments that people have to actually play a role of someone in a leadership role, for example, as a police commissioner, as a chief health officer, or as a mayor, or as some other roles, who have to face the media to provide information about an unfolding disaster.

These are the kind of ways we try to bring in that element and to make it different from other courses that it’s not just hypothetical or just content that you read, but also you practise it, even though it is online, we still have a lot of elements of collaboration and interaction and live working with our participants. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us and sharing all these fantastic insights.

Sergeant Patrick Hayes’ introduction

Maggie Hill: We look forward to hearing more from you during the Q&A segment. Thank you so much. I’d now like to welcome our second speaker, Sergeant Patrick Hayes.

Patrick is an online learning advisor who supports students through their study journey. He also brings frontline experience as a police officer, which gives him a practical view of what emergency management looks like in real settings. Welcome, Patrick.

Sergeant Patrick Hayes: Thanks, Maggie. It’s great to be here and welcome everyone to the webinar. Thank you.

Maggie Hill: So, to start, can you tell us a little bit about your role as an online learning advisor? What do you do in this role, and how do you interact with students on a day-to-day basis?

Sergeant Patrick Hayes: Sure. As an online learning advisor and unit coordinator, I primarily act as the tutor, subject matter expert and academic guide for students as they navigate virtually through the online course. So, primarily, my role is to bring the course or the theory components of the course to life through students, and that’s done through their assignments, basically through discussion boards and just fostering a vibrant online community.

A lot of the students that come into the course come from professional backgrounds, and I’ll touch a little bit more on that a little bit later on, but a lot of professional roles come into this course. So, whether it be from policing, firefighting, health, or a lot of our students come from defence, which is fantastic. So, my role basically is to sort of encourage my students from the beginning of the unit and offer them some ownership of the unit.

So, I offer, I basically act as a guide. The students really have control of the unit. I guide them through it, making their online experience a worthwhile one.

The benefit of experience

Maggie Hill: Fantastic. And can you tell us how your professional experience in policing, how has shaped the way that you support students in this course?

Sergeant Patrick Hayes: So, I think I’ll just, as I touched on, a lot of students come from professional roles, as I’ve stated, from law enforcement, from health, from fire services, from defence. So, with my law enforcement background, I’ve entered my 26th year of operational frontline policing.

So, it’s really given me an opportunity to look back and reflect on some of the gaps across my experience and across my journey in relation to theory or academic theory or course theory and practical experience. So, in my journey, being able to draw on operational experience, I can really help students bridge that gap between academia and real-life experience. What we aim to do in the course is really prepare students for real-world scenarios rather than just learning from academia and textbooks.

Balancing your career and studies

Maggie Hill: Given the background of many of these students, they might be in demanding roles. How do you see them juggling these roles and what they require whilst they’re completing the course?

Sergeant Patrick Hayes: It can be a juggling act, online study. I do sort of emphasise that to my students throughout the course, throughout the units, that online study is challenging.

It is challenging when you have a professional career. A lot of the students have shift-based roles, whether it be in policing, health, fire services, or defence. A lot of those students are juggling families, and they are juggling shift-based roles while completing the course.

So, it really does become a balancing act. So, we try and promote that sort of robust task management and time management rather than referring back to traditional time management.

Connecting with an online community

Maggie Hill: And how do students connect with each other when they’re studying online, and what’s your role in encouraging people who might be a bit hesitant or new to online study?

Sergeant Patrick Hayes: We really foster that to try and enrich that online experience. In the QUT units, we have collaborative live sessions similar to what we’re doing now in a webinar. So, a collaborative live session will involve students obviously coming into a live sort of collaborative room where I’ll be hosting.

We’ll discuss the assignments, and we’ll discuss any questions or queries the students might have. We do those for each assignment. So, it’s really important from my perspective that the students, especially students who have been away from online study for a number of years or are new to online study, it is really important that those students feel supported.

For each assignment, providing an online live session where we can discuss the requirements and the expectations of the assignment. And I do realise, as I’ve touched on with the shift work for a lot of my students, we do record those sessions. So, a student who may not be able to join the live collaborative session will have the opportunity at a later time to sit down in their own time and listen to that recording.

A collaborative, live collaborative session is just one of those strategies we have in the unit. Another is the discussion boards. When students get access to the units, they get access to a discussion board.

So, a discussion board is really a fantastic opportunity for students to not only discuss contemporary topics that might eventuate through the unit, but to provide that sort of networking amongst each other. So, the discussion boards are very popular with students. In a lot of the feedback we have received, students have obviously undertaken professional networking on the discussion boards.

They have taken that from the course into their professional roles. So, we’ve had students who have been involved, for example, in health. They have been involved in disaster or critical incidents moving forward.

And I have found that the connections, the relationships professionally that they have developed in the unit through the discussion boards with other students have been beneficial. Fantastic. That sounds amazing.

Applying concepts in the workplace

Maggie Hill: Can you share an example of how a student might apply the concepts that they’re learning in the course directly in their workplace?

Sergeant Patrick Hayes: Absolutely, and I’ll use an emergency management role as an example. Undertaking this course of study can really enhance the student’s ability in crisis leadership. So, for example, leading a team in a crisis, emergency or critical incident, a student in one of the current units that I’m facilitating, leadership in disaster management, we look at a wide variety of leadership styles and leadership models.

In the crisis context, a student can, for example, apply if they are in that situation, an adaptive leadership style or model. Basically, shifting their routine day-to-day management into a rapid risk assessment, open communication, and problem-solving to really effectively manage that team in a crisis. So, in that example that I’ve used, adaptive leadership model, we really focus on three aspects around the adaptive leadership model, emotional intelligence, organisational justice, and constant learning and development.

In the emotional intelligence aspect, and I know Dr Tolu touched on this briefly, we want to acknowledge the human elements around vulnerable communities or communities that have suffered loss in a critical incident or disaster.