In order to participate in inter-agency emergency response training, many jurisdictions are requiring completion of one or more FEMA courses. The two frequently required are IS-100.b and IS-700.a. The course are independent study and are offered online here.
I took the IS-100.b course and exam today. This is the “Introduction to the Incident Command System”. It took 3 hours and 15 minutes to complete the course (and watch the Pats lose to the Ravens) and take the exam. The course consisted of about five lessons plus an introduction and summary. Each lesson has online review exercises. The online material included some PowerPoint-like slides and some multimedia. It defined what the Incident Command System (ICS) is, how it is applied, how it is organized, including a description of position titles and responcibilities, what facilities used, and planning.
After taking the exam and entering some personal information I was informed that I would learn the results within a day or so and be issued a PDF certificate if I scored at least 75% on the exam (19 right out of 25). Quite honestly, I felt like the exam touched on all the major important points and did not dwell on minutiae. I also felt that all questions had one obvious correct answer and three obvious incorrect answers. I was pleasantly surprised.
FEMA Course Decoder Ring: The “IS” part stands for Independent Study (Web-based course). This is followed by a classification code that keeps similar things grouped. Finally if the class material has been revised, there is a revision code like “.b” following the number.
See the ECOMM tab on the black bar for more info.
