Staff Exercises in The Process of Student Education in The National Security Field of Study

Objective: To present effective procedures for preparing and conducting staff exercises with students in the field of National Security. Staff exercises conducted with students in the field of National Security are a form of exercises aimed at preparing participants to react optimally in non-military crisis situations. They are usually conducted with crisis management teams and with commands and staffs managing rescue or preventive activities. In the taxonomy of educational goals, staff exercises are included in the group (D), which allows students to acquire practical skills of formulating and solving problems, analyzing and synthesizing phenomena that are new to students, formulating action plans, creating original solutions and evaluating them according to various criteria. As a result, they are (should be) conducted at the final stage of second-cycle studies. Ensuring the possibility (conditions) for students of the National Security course to acquire skills and habits in managing non-military crisis situations requires, inter alia, precise procedures for preparing (developing) and conducting staff exercises for them. Methodology: The solutions proposed in the article are based on the results of research conducted by the author, which are included in the literature [1, 2, 3]. Theoretical methods (analyzes, syntheses and analogies) and empirical methods were used in the research process. The empirical methods were dominated by the survey method, and within it – the interview technique. Conclusions:

1. Staff exercises in the field of National Security are a very important and indispensable form of educating students. During these exercises, students acquire and improve the skills that will be necessary for their professional work to respond optimally in non-military crisis situations.
2. The preparation of the staff exercises should be entrusted to the authors’ teams, which during these exercises should act as the exercise management.
3. The subject of staff exercises should be determined by the main potential non-military threats that occur (may occur) in a given country. These are usually: floods, construction disasters, multifocal forest fires, chemical and biological contamination, extensive power failures, terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure facilities, as well as threats to public safety during mass events.
4. Documentation prepared for the staff exercise should include two sets of documents: one for the participating teams and the other for the exercise management.
5. For the training teams (students) the following should be prepared: assumptions for the staff exercise; guidelines for preparatory classes and staff exercises; source materials for the participating teams; sets of tactical maps (to be glued) and detailed plans of places where a rescue operation or a preventive action is carried out.
6. The management of the staff exercise should have all the documents received by the participating teams, as well as: the plan for carrying out the exercise, the plan of the announcement for the response cell, author’s solutions (methodological studies) of the basic problems played in the exercise, name lists of the participating teams, plan for the exercise evaluation, etc.