E-Learning for Hazmat and Emergency Response (Sbir/Sttr Initiative)

The summary for the E-Learning for Hazmat and Emergency Response (Sbir/Sttr Initiative) grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the National Institutes of Health, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

E-Learning for Hazmat and Emergency Response (Sbir/Sttr Initiative): The purpose of this RFA is to further the development of Advanced Technology Training (ATT) Products for the health and safety training of hazardous materials (HAZMAT) workers, emergency responders, and skilled support personnel. The mission of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) is to promote research and training that will ultimately reduce the burden of human disease and illness occurring as a consequence of exposure to hazardous environmental substances. The major objective of the NIEHS Worker Education and Training Program is to prevent work related harm by assisting in the training of workers in how best to protect themselves and their communities from exposure to hazardous materials encountered during hazardous waste operations, hazardous materials transportation, environmental restoration of contaminated facilities or chemical/biological/radiological emergency response and clean-up. The creation of prevention partnerships between employers, employees, universities and community members has been a hallmark of the program. A major goal of the NIEHS program is to assist organizations efficiently and effectively with the development of institutional competency to provide appropriate model training and education programs to hazardous materials handlers, chemical emergency responders, and waste cleanup workers, as specified in Section 126 (g) of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA), and skilled support personnel as defined in CFR 1910.120. The NIEHS program has been funded primarily on the basis of the worker protection statutes of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (Section 126 of SARA). Since its authorization by Congress in 1986, the NIEHS Worker Education and Training Program (WETP) has been funding the development, deployment, and utilization of state-of-theart safety and health training for hazardous waste operations workers and chemical emergency responders. In addition, the WETP began administering additional grant awards for such training that has been funded by the Department of Energy to meet that Department's expanding high hazard operations training needs associated with the massive environmental restoration program being undertaken by the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM). More recently, additional training grant awards have been executed and managed by WETP targeting minority HAZWOPER workers and the EPA Brownfields program. Since September 11, 2001, WETP has awarded supplemental training grants in response to weapons of mass destruction incidents. Through the encouragement of multi-state, university-based consortia and the development of national non-profit organizations which have focused on specific workforce sectors, the program has established technically- proficient curriculum materials and quality-controlled course presentations. These courses have been delivered to hazardous materials workers, emergency responders, and skilled support personnel in every region of the country and have established new national benchmarks for quality worker safety and health training. The immediate goal of worker health and safety training is educational in nature, designed to provide students with relevant information, program- solving skills, and the confidence needed to use these tools. Long-term goals of the model training programs should be to assure that workers become and remain active participants in determining and improving the health and safety conditions under which they work and that avenues for collaborative employer-employee relationships in creating safe workplaces are established. In recent years there have been enormous technological advancements in computer-based technologies and applications. These Advanced Training Technologies (ATT) include a wide variety of electronic learning (e-learning) components. Distance learning, electronic classrooms, interactive TV, multimedia, computer-based training, computer-assisted training, virtual reality training simulations, CD, CD-R, DVD and video teleconferencing, among others, have and are being developed and advanced to support expanding training needs and requirements. NIEHS intends to build on its program experience in environmental safety and health training by stimulating creative Small Business Innovative Research proposals to create ATT products that will support high quality health and safety training for hazardous materials workers, emergency responders, and skilled support personnel. To further enhance our ability to move toward commercialization of ATT products relevant to model safety and health training for hazardous materials workers, emergency responders, and skilled support personnel, this initiative focuses on the development of technology driven commercial products using the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) program. In December 2001 NIEHS WETP released RFA-ES-02-002: Initial Development Of Innovative E-Learning Products For Worker Safety And Health Training In Hazardous Waste And Chemical Emergency Response. In September 2002 NIEHS WETP, made one one-year and three two-year Phase I awards in response to RFA-ES-02-002. This new RFA, while incorporating the goals of the original RFA, builds upon it, by recognizing the need for the application of advanced training technologies that focus on chemical, biological, and radiological training for skilled support personnel. NIEHS WETP, in considering the development and application of ATT to worker safety and health training, has realized that there is a substantial challenge of integrating this new technology to our awardee organizations. This challenge is associated with the fact that each of the WETP awardee organizations is different with regard to its training target audience, the computer literacy and access to such technology among its target audience, the work its training target population performs, and training delivery methods and means among others. In many ways, these challenges reflect the current reality of delivering job-related training content to any adult population in the United States. The digital divide in its various manifestations is a reality for anyone who attempts to use ATT approaches to effectively reach target populations with low levels of computer experience and knowledge. This concern for hazardous waste workers and chemical emergency responders has been particularly acute for a high risk target population, which is characterized by ethnic and cultural diversity, low levels of formal education, and minimal prior computer fluency. Given the WETP core values for hands-on learning, instructor-to-learner, and learner-to-learner interaction is viewed as a very valuable part of the learning experience. Thus, wholesale replacement of an instructor-led course with ATT methods is not normally desirable. The virtual unanimity of views expressed by participants at the initial WETP ATT workshop in 1999 indicates that successful ATT insertion into an NIEHS-type program would require a careful understanding of the relationship between individual skill-based components and hands-on, instructor and worker-oriented training. The consensus of the workshop participants was that these elements need to be clearly identified and that any ATT enhancements must be clearly shown to be compatible with these skill objectives for an ATT driven training program to be successful. It is clear that there is a growing convergence between both Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Knowledge Management Portals, which should merge into more learner-centered technology. Moreover, there is a continuing synthesis of traditional classroom pedagogy and the purely on-line or computer-based method of learning, which have been characterized as a blended learning approach. The NIEHS WETP Advanced Training Technology (ATT) Initiative has already created a wealth of background materials that have explored the application of technology-supported learning to the safety and health field.