So, You Want to Create a Nationally Certified Police Training Course?

First of all, kudos to you! The law enforcement community needs people like you. Creating training directly impacts the readiness of officers in the field and the safety of their communities. Plus, new training is a key factor in recruiting and retaining officers, which is a major hurdle facing many police agencies. But do you know what you’re getting yourself into? There’s a reason not every cop is a cop educator. This process takes time, patience, money, and a whole lot of effort. Let’s dig in.

 

The Long Road Ahead

Pre-work: Develop the skills and expertise in the topic area. Is it a specialized area that requires specialized skills, knowledge, ability? Ensure it is within your scope of expertise or you have access to the subject mater experts to assist you. 

The Costs

Creating police training can add up to a significant sum. Research shows that developing one hour of instructor-led training can take anywhere from 43 to 185 hours, depending on complexity. That means a 100-hour curriculum could take between 4,300 and 18,500 hours, or cost an agency $229,000 to $555,000 in labor alone.

(If you’re looking for a cost-effective, ready-to-go solution, V-VICTA delivers 100 hours of POST-certified, training, without the overwhelming development burden. Learn more: https://www.virtra.com/overview-le/v-victa-training/)

Understand the Standards
Before you do anything, you need to familiarize yourself with the IADLEST National Certification Program (NCP) standards. These guidelines determine if your course is rigorous, relevant, and meets instructor qualifications. Also, conduct a needs assessment. Figure out knowledge gaps and align your course with real-world law enforcement challenges. Don’t forget legal and ethical compliance. Your curriculum must meet your state and federal training requirements, which are often available on state POST websites.

Build a Strong Foundation
It may help to follow an instructional design model like instructional design model like ADDIE to guide your process. Think of curriculum development like building a house: start with the foundation before adding specialized content. The design model you choose does not matter as much as the fact that you follow one. This will reduce the burden of organizing the course material.

 

Testing & Instructional Materials

Assess Learning Effectiveness
A great course requires teaching AND performance measurement. That means:

  • Pre-tests to assess baseline knowledge.
  • Post-tests to measure retention (use scenario-based, not just multiple-choice).
  • Rubrics for consistent evaluation.

Equip Instructors
At every stage, think about how easy it will be for other instructors to deliver your course. That means an instructor guide is a MUST: clear learning objectives, discussion points, and engagement strategies.

  • PowerPoint slides should be concise and visual—no walls of text! Ask yourself, Would a Gen Z officer in training stay engaged in the presentation? Would I?
  • Workbooks with bullet points help officers remember key concepts and take notes.

 

Hands-On Learning & Police Curriculum Certification

Keep It Real with Scenarios
The best learning happens through experience. Use hands-on instruction like:

  • Live role-playing exercises
  • Simulator training

Consider any real-world situations you’ve experienced where you had to apply the knowledge being taught. These can provide an excellent foundation for your course’s scenarios.
To increase knowledge retention, consider a structured debriefing to help officers process and apply what they’ve learned.

 

Get Certified
Before launching, get feedback from subject matter experts (SMEs) to ensure accuracy: colleagues, published experts, and any mentors that have relevant experience. Then, pilot test your course to fine-tune pacing and content. Assuming all went smoothly, next you can:

  • Submit a detailed certification package to IADLEST.
  • Be prepared for revisions!

 

Launch, Evaluate & Improve Your Police Curriculum

Train & Engage Instructors

Your instructors should facilitate discussions, encourage critical thinking, and keep officers engaged. If you gained any valuable insights while piloting the course, now is the time to share them with your training team. Ensure your instructors are equipped with the necessary tools to make the training effective and impactful.

Track Performance & Maintain

  • Collect participant feedback to refine training.
  • Conduct an annual review to update content for new laws & best practices.
  • Keep detailed records for compliance and certification renewal.

Bottom line? Writing a police curriculum is a marathon, not a sprint. But if you see it through, you’ll help officers develop critical skills to serve their communities.

 

Need a Shortcut? We’ve Got You Covered

If you made it this far, congratulations! We look forward to seeing your course certification announcement on IADLEST social media. Now, go get some much-needed rest. We certainly needed some!

Creating a training course or police curriculum is time-consuming, costly, and complex. Even with an in-house team like at VirTra, it’s a heavy lift.

If you’re crunched for time and budget, skip the hassle and use our ready-to-use curriculum. It’s:

  • Fully developed with rubrics, tests, presentations, videos & case law.
  • POST-certified and ready to use on Day One.
  • FREE with every VirTra simulator

V-VICTA is how VirTra gives back to the law enforcement training community. Because nothing should stand between you and training your officers.

Learn more: https://www.virtra.com/overview-le/v-victa-training/

 

Sources:

Chapman, B. (2010). How Long Does it Take to Create Learning? [Research Study]. Published by Chapman Alliance LLC. www.chapmanalliance.com

Karl M. Kapp, Robyn A Defelice. “Time to Develop One Hour of Training.” ATD, 31 Aug. 2009. Web. 31 Jan. 2017. www.td.org

As you may be aware, IADLEST offers a National Certification Program (NCP), which serves as a standard for police training. As such, the program sets a higher standard of training for training companies—such as VirTra—and vendors to provide quality education and training content to our law enforcement nationwide.

NCP certification standards meet and often exceed individual State certification requirements, ensuring training is accepted by all participating POST organizations for training credit.

For this reason and more, VirTra has been submitting V-VICTA™—Virtual Interactive Coursework Training Academy—curriculum for NCP certification. VirTra is currently the only simulator company that offers certified curriculum for officers, which comes free with every law enforcement simulator.

With the NCP seal proudly displayed on the front of each coursework, agencies know they are provided with content that has gone through a rigorous approval process and meets most POST standards.

In addition to providing quality training to officers, V-VICTA certified curriculum also saves agencies time and money. Think about how many department resources are spent reviewing training, the time and money required to approve a single hour of curriculum.

Or consider the millions of dollars cities spend defending themselves or settling lawsuits due to lack of training and police wrongdoings. Litigation fees, settlement fees and court-ordered payments can all be minimized with officers who are properly and adequately trained. Officers trained to react appropriately to a variety of situations are far less likely to find themselves involved in lawsuits due to alleged wrongdoing.

However, creating these coursework materials is no easy task. When preparing to submit materials for certification, VirTra must meet a series of general requirements, such as: extensive research, citations, having correct knowledge retention format, comprehensive testing materials, scoring rubric, pre-test, post-test, class evaluation forms and much more.

Once submitted, the curriculum is thoroughly reviewed and vetted by professionals in the field. Professionals include some with Masters degrees in Instructional Design and Education Technology and years of real-world experience. Curriculum is then returned in a few weeks with any edits, comments and final approval or rejection. With approval comes a two-year certification and promise to our clients with the highest quality training.

To date, VirTra has submitted 17 V-VICTA courses through NCP with a total of 60+ hours. Our most recent certified curriculum was Autism Awareness, a combination of classroom materials and interactive scenarios designed to help officers distinguish autistic behavior from those that mimic others, such as indicators for drug/alcohol use or deceptive behavior.

This curriculum was co-created through a partnership with SARRC—Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center—and utilizes their industry insight and expertise. Together, this partnership resulted in curriculum that helps mitigate the difficulties law enforcement face when encountering people who may be on the spectrum.

Other critical curriculum created for law enforcement include: Active Threat/Active Killer, Contact and Cover Concepts, High-Risk Vehicle Stop, Mental Illness for Contact Professionals, Tourniquet Application Under Threat and more. Each of these curricula are NCP certified, ensuring the highest quality for agencies that implement this curriculum into their training sessions.

Instructors can train well, knowing all content is up-to-date, certified and designed for maximum skill transfer. To learn more about VirTra’s NCP-approved curriculum, please contact a specialist.