A Strategy for Educating Students about the Active Shooter

December 08, 2016

Teaching with Stories and Content
Cara W. McFadden, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Sport and Event Management
School of Communications
Elon University

In the wake of over 200 mass shootings in 2016, it is important for practitioners to view themselves as educators to discuss strategies for teaching future collegiate recreation professionals about active shooter protocols (as well as train current student employees). For this article practitioners will be called educators.

The Gun Violence Archive defines a “mass shooting” as any event where there are four or more people injured or killed. The most recent mass shooting at the Orlando Pulse night club killed 49 people. This and other similar occurrences are happening in our public spaces where individuals should feel safe – schools, movie theaters, churches, community facilities, and other social gathering spaces. With the awareness that Campus Recreation centers can also be included under ‘public spaces’, professionals need to be prepared in the event of a mass shooting occurring in their recreation facilities.

This article focuses on the concern of the active shooter in sport and recreation environments and the role practitioners play in educating students to have a survival mindset. Strategies will be shared from an example of a course taught at Elon University entitled, Facilities and Venue Management. The course concentrates on the use of personal story telling with an active shooter incident, case study analysis, and application to the industry.
The pedagogy or teaching strategy used for the course is divided into three course meetings that could also be planned for three training sessions (or day long training).
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Active Shooter

October 18, 2015

Kate Dorrity
Assistant Director – Risk and Facilities Management
Purdue University, Division of Recreational Sports

Active Shooter: two of the most terrifying words to appear on a campus alert notification. In the blink of an eye, all the components that make campus recreation special and exciting become liabilities to personal safety: the large number of guests participating in many different activities, the transient nature of student staff, and the variety of indoor and outdoor locations with open access to all. Paired with the randomness, confusion, and fear that shootings instill in everyone, the ability to maintain safety for staff and participants is a great challenge. Preparing staff is challenging, but we can give them the skills to protect themselves by identifying ways of collecting details about the situations, focusing on a flexible plan and pairing it with experiential training. Read more