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REVIEW: “Your Role In Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs” from ECPAT

Online Course Review Series

This is a part of a series of reviews of anti-trafficking courses.

Summary

Cost: .

Assessment-based Certificate: No.

Interactivity: There are a few sections where you can select the order in which you read them. On the menu, students can review any section they have completed. However, once you have signed out of your session, you must start the course from scratch and cannot skip ahead.

Duration: 30 minutes.

Course description: Your Role In Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs is a 30-minute training is offered in 17 languages, developed by , and produced by Marriott International, in collaboration with , and with the support of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, an ECPAT-USA corporate Partner in Protection.

This module is tailored specifically for hotel professionals in the , including hotel brands, owners, management companies, independent hotels, bed and breakfasts, state hotel associations and industry partners and suppliers.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Table of contents

When you sign out, you must re-start the course and cannot skip ahead.

Review: Lots of good material that builds upon itself. Essentially, it is a slideshow presentation being read out loud with NEXT / PREV buttons throughout to move through the sections.

It's not just a bunch of “facts.” 

It's nice that there is a voice reading everything out loud. They also have a “notes” section with the voice transcript text so you can read along. 

The lists of “signs” for each type of hotel employee is excellent, but there is no way to copy it down or to log in to use it as a resource. Having a printable list would be vital in this situation.

As a student that likes to review my training materials, I have noted that every time you log in, you have to begin the entire course again. That also happens if you choose to not resume where you left off. Starts fresh and no skipping ahead. This was quite frustrating to me.

The biggest “flaw” I encountered with the course is that they were relying on someone else hosting those resource materials. You can't ever count on anyone else doing it right. It makes me wonder how much testing they do on this course. For any users of the course that want it, I was able to find the materials through the Internet Wayback Machine at archive.org. View “Guidelines for checking recruiting agencies here.” 

Ends with an easy to use “post to LinkedIn” tool, but requires some additional work people may not be able to understand. I can see that being very frustrating to others. 

WOW, they are in a LOT of languages! Available in 17 languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Deutsch (German), English, Espanol (Spanish), French (Canadian), French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese.

Link to course: Click here.

Link to downloadable materials: Guidelines for checking recruiting agencies. 

There is a minimal amount of decision making you get as a user, but it's only to choose what slide to go to

“Risks to the business” is the first interactivity.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Risks to the business
"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Click to get text to appear

Above, you can see the four areas where you can click to unlock some text. It's the first thing I've clicked, besides the NEXT, PREV, MENU, and VOLUME buttons. Each is read aloud, and the previous audio cuts off when you click the next one. I like that, so you get immediate feedback. 

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Who are the victims slide

The above is an example of a slide in the presentation.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Slide with notes sidebar

Another interesting aspect is that they have all of the audio written in the “Notes” section on the left. You can see the slide has bullets, where the notes include extra information.

Course content

After the building blocks of what trafficking is, and why they would use hotels, I made it to the first list of specific items of to look for.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Second Interactive Area

This is the second “interactive” area, where I am able to make a selection. These are similar to the prior items. They unlock more content, but do not allow for any learning / testing with the interactions.

Clicking one of the items merely advances / changes the order in which you experience the following slides. 

My thought is that making people click on something, anything, must give them a sense of control. Ultimately, it's still a slideshow that reads the material to me. I am not truly engaged.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Slide where I can unlock the bullets

Now that I have chosen a path through the deck, I land on a page where I get to activate the bullets. 

If I choose, I can skip those bullets by clicking NEXT.

Once I have clicked NEXT, I'm on the prior “select” page. This continues until I have clicked all the prior clickables.

Each of these bullets unlock a list of things a certain staff member might see. Allowing people to click through these quickly (unlike the parts where the narrator reads) seems to be missing the value in the thing that is MOST important. 

My initial thought is that it would be interesting to see if people could take a list of things you might observe and drag them into a specific job role. Many would be duplicated, but would be more likely in hospitality, for example.

Now, I that I say / think about labor trafficking in the hotel itself, I'm noticing there does not appear to be anything in here speaking about trafficking being done by the hotel… That's something that MUST be covered. It MIGHT come up in the labor trafficking section, so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Special events

My understanding, and I need to find the materials, is that this is actually not as true as people believe with regard to sex trafficking. 

It's possible they may see some labor trafficking during construction growth, so maybe the fact they added that makes it all worthwhile. 

Whatever the case, as long as they are sill keeping an eye out all the time, we're all good. I just get concerned when people use these events as a publicity stunt. But even those are opportunities to spread the word.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Trafficking and special events

It's worth noting that the material all seems quite nice and accurate. I'm just not feeling I'm doing more than checking a box. And by that, I mean “pressing the next button” throughout. Even the interactive sections are just small “next” buttons.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Know how to react

The material all seems quite nice. 

Their “response” section is on point. Lots of details. I'd have a hard time remembering these on a slide like this.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Look for subcontractor trafficking

This is pretty exciting to see that they are mentioning that management should know about their subcontractors!

This is the first time they have told me there is a section. The little arrow hasn't been there before.

When I click the arrow, it is trying to find a PDF that is located on another site. Luckily the other site has a 404 redirect that takes you to the home page of that site. This means no resource ever appears.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Certificate of Completion

Time for the wrap-up and that's it! 

VERDICT: No testing. No activities. Only click for content.

LinkedIn integration details below.

Facebook post worked flawlessly. I was logged in at the time.

Twitter post also worked flawlessly. I was logged in at the time.

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT My Facebook post
"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Passed
"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT My Tweet for Twitter
"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Certificate of Completion on screen

There it is! And of course I cannot go without mentioning the kerning on “Certificate.” How did that slip by the creator?

I also don't like the carriage return after “FOR,” or the way the sentence is written. This could be because they are using a “merge” system for all the languages and names of their courses, rather than just not caring.

Adding certificate to LinkedIn

"Preventing Human Trafficking: Recognize the Signs" from ECPAT Add to LinkedIn

This is where I get JEALOUS! How did they do this? It opens the LinkedIn “add license and certificate” window. I'm going to go back and see what happens if I'm not logged in at the time, but WOW THIS IS IMPRESSIVE!

It did exactly what I wanted it to do: it took me to the login page and then immediately did the add license! 

It's not that it's a fatal flaw, but I gotta say that filling those fields out is more difficult than I want. 

I can still access the page that took me to LinkedIn (GREAT), but the information for those fields is nowhere to be found. I am making them up as best I can. 

The credential URL is on our page at the bottom, but I cannot find it for this course. There is no Credential ID, and I have no idea if / when the certificate expires. 

The expiration date is an unknown factor on our course as well. Some places give you a year, and then they harass you though email quite thoroughly to re-purchase / re-take their course. 

I would assume that these don't “expire” as much as the management just makes you retake then at their own rate.

Additional information

Features

  • Information on human trafficking of children and adults for the purposes of both sex and labor
  • Globalized information to make the program relevant at properties around the world
  • Content that is compliant with many new city ordinances and state laws requiring hotels to train their employees on human trafficking
  • Tips for management to set up a response protocol, including escalating reports from front-line employees & obtaining a trained contact

Benefits

  • Define human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children
  • Learn the risks human trafficking poses to hotels
  • Understand the differences between labor and sex trafficking
  • Recognize indicators of trafficking– through position specific indicators
  • React to a suspected incidence of trafficking (front-line & management)