Enterprise eLearning Development

on AgLearn: Doing More With Less

By John P. Rehberger on June 4, 2012 with Joe Gorup, CourseAvenue

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About 125,000 users (e.g., USDA employees, contract

staff, partners, etc.) across 29 agencies and offices

About 1 million learning events each year (courses

taken, books read, classes attended, etc.). Over 99%

free to USDA learners.

Full-service operation with significant economies of

scale (<$5M annual budget = $27M in cost avoidance).

Overall budget shrank about 10% from FY11 to FY12.

The official training record repository for USDA.

About AgLearn

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Core AgLearn Services

• Support Mandated Training

• Classroom Management

• External Training Management

• Library of Common Work Resources

• Creation of Mission-specific

Online Courses

• Talent/Competency Management

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Business

Skills • 900+ titles

IT Professional • 1,700+ titles

Desktop • 400+ titles

On-demand

Business &

Technical

books

• 15,000+ titles

Award Winning

Immersion Training

• 17 In Depth Programs

Financial, Retirement

and TSP Training for the

Federal Workforce

AgLearn Vended Learning Resources

SkillSoft Government

Leadership Advantage

And

SkillSoft Live Events

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50%

11% 7%

5%

5% 2%

2%

2%

12%

3%

USDA-wide

Dept Admin

OCFO

NRCS

APHIS

FS

FSA

9th House

SkillSoft

OtherAgencies/Offices

Custom Courses Were 86% of

AgLearn Online Courses in 2011

Non-USDA-

specific

Courses

More than 1 million completed learning

activities on AgLearn in 2011.

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AgLearn is Hosting More

Webinars …

Cumulative Number of Webinars by Fiscal Year

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep

FY2010

FY2011

FY2012

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And More People Are

Attending Them

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

20000

Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep

FY2010

FY2011

FY2012

Cumulative Webinar Attendees by Fiscal Year

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AgLearn “Wedding Cake”

Director: Jerome Davin

Deputy: John Rehberger

AgLearn Administrators (about 1400 people)

AgLearn Agency/Office Leads (about 50 people)

PMO and Hosting Support Staff

(about 13 FTEs)

AgLearn Users (over 125,000 people)

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+ The process for getting new material into AgLearn was:

– Mandatory (and thus somewhat resented);

– Slow and unpredictable;

– Expensive in terms of support costs and the submitters’ time;

– Not transparent (and thus made people suspicious);

– And often ended in finger-pointing and nasty or sarcastic or passive/aggressive e-mail messages.

+ New tools were being introduced concurrently, but these

tools were not going to be able to fix the underlying process problems.

The Content Integration Problem

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Old Integration Took an Average

of Two Months per Course

Agency Days Lapsed

RD Average 26

OCFO Average 28

NRCS Average 29

FSIS Average 56

APHIS Average 57

OCIO Average 60

CR Average 65

AMS Average 92

FS Average 93

ARS Average 107

DA Average 211

Grand Average 68

Source: ATS data for 2009-2010

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About Half of Submitted Courses

Didn’t Get Onto AgLearn

Source: ATS data in Jan. 2011

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Old Content Integration Process

Content Files Uploaded to FTP site; ATS ticket is Created

508 review; AICC and SCORM testing; TIA

assessment

Files Sent to Production Site

Files Sent to Staging Site

Final Review by Agency POC

Feedback sent to POC via ATS

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+ LSS project ran from Jan. – May 2011

+ New process started in June 2011

+ Outcome:

– Process is capable of a sustained 5-day cycle time

– Thru 105 submitted courses:

• Average cycle time cut to 29 days with 100% success rate (and far fewer complaints)

• Support costs dropped from more than $500/course for integration to less than $200/course

– Course development risk pushed out to parties best able to manage it

– Supports greater scalability

Lean 6 Sigma Project

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Part of the secret…

Ensuring Standards are met

Free-for-all: Not good

Standards & Guidelines: Better than nothing

Templates: Fine - Not scalable & variable

application

Built in : Ensures consistent application,

scalable

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Current “Fast-Track” Process

Sample testing by AgLearn staff

Forms are completed; files are uploaded or

identified

Files sent to Production Site

Agency official signs conformance form

Files sent to Staging Site

Final Acceptance

testing

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+ AgLearn+ Courseware Technical Reference Guide – Provides

technical details for people when developing content for

AgLearn

– See http://usda.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/119 for details

+ AgLearn Central SharePoint site – Enhances transparency

Content Integration Guide and

Tools

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AgLearn Online Course

Creation “Swim Lanes”

Briefings

Create new

courses

Modify current

CA and non-CA

courses

Create new or

modify current

courses Other tools/vendors

Procure online

COTS courses

Content Integration Process

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+ CourseAvenue (our recommended, but not required, tool)

– Supports 508 compliance

– Supports maintainability and better content updating

– User-friendly with expertise-based support

– PowerPoint template = 90% of final course “look and feel”

– Currently used to create about 50% of the new content in AgLearn

– Developing support for multi-platform mobile options

Course Development Tools

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+ 2013 will be the year of “AgLearn Mobile”

– We routinely get demand-pull requests for mobile learning support

– Based on the 2012 ASTD conference no one seems to have mastered mobile learning and learning management

– The SuccessFactors purchase of Plateau has modified Plateau’s mobile plans

– Technical constraints

• Mobile single sign-on (SSO) authentication

• Current mix of USDA platforms

– Currently testing various mobile support options

The Future of Content on AgLearn

Stnd Cell

Phone

Black berry

Other Smart Phone

USDA Mobile Platforms (as of May 2012)

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Visit us at www.aglearn.usda.gov

and see how

AgLearn+ is “Adding to Your

Knowledge”!

Questions?

John P. Rehberger, Deputy Dir. 703-828-5519 Joe Gorup, CEO, CourseAvenue 630-225-4257