Training & Technology in Government 2000: IQPC/GPRA Institute Conference
Washington, DC, June 27-28, 2000

Report by Sareen R. Gerson, Federal Communicators Network
sareen.gerson@osha.gov

Seventy-two percent of public four-year colleges and universities in the U. S. now offer distance learning. The Gartner Group predicts that by 2001, at least 77 percent of companies will use their intranets to train employees. Add an official push in the form of an Executive Order from President Clinton, and it's no wonder federal training officers are trying to make the best use of new developments in technology-based training.

All of this made for lively discussions when attendees shared experiences at the IQPC/GPRA Institute conference in Washington, June 27-28. Air Force personnel are so accustomed to computer-based training they consider it a routine part of their schedules. Agencies that are in the beginning phases of distance learning are finding a host of newly available channels for course delivery to student desktops. Every day brings fresh insights into emerging issues: how to share training across agency lines; how graphics can help or hinder course presentation; ways to compensate for the lack of face-to-face classroom contact, the differences in how learners read and retain "on screen" information compared with print. Allowing sufficient time to develop a distance learning program, and moving ahead one step at a time were themes repeated throughout the conference. Managing the culture change is a big challenge, but it's an exciting time for educators, in and outside government.

As Executive Director of the President's Task Force on Federal Training Technology, Emzell ("E.B.") Blanton, Jr., OSHA's former Deputy Assistant Secretary, described the dauntingly broad scope of the group's responsibilities. Established by President Clinton's Executive Order 13111, January 12, 1999, the Task Force will recommend ways to use technology to make training opportunities an integral part of continuing federal employment, to improve employee performance. Each cabinet department will
identify specific subjects, and develop advanced technology-based courses, which may also be used in other agencies. Numerous focus groups and sub-groups have been assigned various segments of the work: recommending software standards to be used in procurement; conducting surveys of best practices, and on and on.

The Individual Training Accounts initiative for federal workers was their first project, headed by Task Force vice-chair Patricia Lattimore, Assistant Secretary, Department of Labor. Final Task Force recommendations were not yet complete at the time of the conference. However, issues under review include the critical need for training technology standards and for a "One Stop Shop" for federal agencies, to help get employees up to speed quickly. Goals for the new training methods are expected to be integrated into agencies' strategic plans and annual budgets. Meanwhile, human resource development personnel are already seeking guidance, as they realize they will need new sets of skills to be able to make the business case to agency management for moving to technology.

CDR Ben Stewart, who heads the Coast Guard Electronics Systems Service Unit, Miami, introduced the basics of information transport to the uninitiated. His exemplary mini-course spelled out the complexities of such electronic communications concepts as bandwidth vis-a-vis bits per second; signal-to-noise ratios; applicable segments of the radio frequency spectrum; and wireline and wireless capacities. In the conference program book given to each attendee, Stewart's 58 pages titled "Channel Capacity for the Complete Idiot" will be a helpful reference back at the office. Simply learning the acronyms was enlightening -- DSL, ISDN, GEO, LEO, and so on. Stewart explained how satellite uplinks and downlinks work, and gave us a glimpse of technologies he thinks will be available next year, along with types of equipment required and estimated costs (by no means small).

During the Technology Panel Discussion, we explored future trends with Jolly T. Holden, president, U. S. Distance Learning Association. "The world is going IP (Internet Protocol)," he said, "with new products and services coming on the scene every day.The microwave will be talking to the refrigerator -- this is coming!" New products -- IP telephony, multicasting, and videoconferencing -- are supporting distance learning, and, instead of hardware, software integration with compression technologies (bundled
services) will likely be chosen to encode and decode. Holden foresees more Learning Service Providers (LSPs) and learning community niches. One such knowledge-based market could consist, for example, of engineers and their associated training sites. All of these developments should eventually mean lower costs.

G.A. Redding, of the Institute for Defense Analyses, believes we can improve performance by choosing the correct technology. He defines distance learning as "structured learning that takes place when the instructor is not physically present," as distinguished from distributed learning, which takes place "anytime, anywhere it is needed or desired, typically where the learner controls the environment." Advanced distributed learning is "distributed learning that emphasizes collaboration on standards-based
versions of reusable objects, networks, and learning management systems, yet may include some legacy methods and media." (For more on this, see www.Corporate) Attitudes about knowledge in the workplace have shifted fundamentally. Ford Motor Company, for example, has provided home computers and internet access to their 350,000 employees. Technologies impact costs, Redding warned, presented projections of the typically ascending course costs and life-cycle costs per student using paper, the internet, computer-based training and video-teletraining.

The third panelist, Dr. Philip Westfall, of the Air Force Institute for Advanced Distributed Learning at Wright-Patterson AFB, created and directs the interactive television Air Technology Network. The ATN reaches 88 sites, including Europe and the Pacific. He also led the establishment of the Government Education & Training Network. Sixteen government agencies use the 13 GETN uplinks to reach more than 1100 downlink sites, about evenly divided between DoD and civilian agencies.

"The ATN is driven by Air Force requirements to train people fast, and the only way to do that is by satellite," Westfall said. ATN synchronous learning includes such varied courses as aircraft maintenance, military technical training, civil engineering, fiscal and contract law, and hazardous waste management. It has proven to be cost effective, with a ten-fold increase in student throughput, from 30 when the program began to the current average of 300 in a classroom. Because Air Force has to manage change on a daily basis, the easily updated ATN is an exceptionally useful tool. While all resident training has not yet shut down, in 1999 alone use of the network avoided $9,503,000 in training expenditures.

When the Army National Guard was deemed "not ready to participate" in Desert Storm, the bureau decided that multiple training means could beef up ARNG readiness. "There's no one silver bullet," said Lt. Commander Dennis Donovan, Project Manager of the National Guard Bureau's Distributed Training Technology Project (DTTP), which now runs 155 multimedia classrooms and has received a half dozen awards for technological excellence. Considering the makeup of ARNG personnel and their multiple missions, time is their scarcest commodity. Distance training has enhanced recruitment and retention, because members are more likely to stay with the Guard if they don't have to leave home or job for a training session. In its three-phase pilot, the GuardNet XXI Network provided training access to 362,000 soldiers in more than 3,360 community classrooms served by varied media to meet voice, video and data requirements. Collaboration with industry and academia and partnering with DOD and other federal and state agencies helped the plan succeed, and it now has more than $250 million in additional Congressional support. "If we had it to do over again, we'd get the leaders on board earlier, make sure the trainers establish requirements before the techies run with it, and synchronize the courseware with classroom and network deployment," Donovan said.

In response to statistics showing that while costs for worker training (private and public sectors) now add up to about $240 billion a year, less than 30 percent of training is transferred to workplace performance, the Bureau began evaluating ARNG training in terms of return on investment. ARNG Major Lisa Balzereit and Booz-Allen & Hamilton representatives Fred Poker and Paul Bardack presented their conclusions. Agencies need to use the best available mix of training methods and delivery technologies. Training departments should offer courses specifically designed to match the agency's strategic goal requirements. Managers must ensure that the training will be used on the job. Training evaluators can no longer rely only on trainees' reactions at the end of a course; they must weigh investment costs and recurring expenditures against realized benefits.

Patrick Powers, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, recommended an incremental approach to building a complete networked multimedia system. An initial charge to support IT training for the DNR's decentralized workforce quickly led to a much broader task: designing and delivering multimedia courses over the agency's intranet for more than 3,000 employees in a six-month timeframe. Useful tip: using both commercial IT courses and in-house courses (Graphics/Text Computer Based Training; Mixed Media), they chose technologies that would allow presenting the same or different courses concurrently, so they could market the system for other types of training. A Local Area Network, using FDDI/Switched Ethernet, let them run 32 concurrent sessions without interruptions. The next step was going to a Wide
Area Network. Powers outlined the skills needed for in-house on-line course development. Hiring criteria should include demonstrated interest in continuous learning, communications skills, teaching experience, interpersonal sensitivity, problem solving, and multimedia-related experience.

Mark Van Buren, American Society of Training and Development research director, described the ongoing Learning Technology Acceptance Study, which should be completed this fall. An ASTD initiative in partnership with the Masie Center, a learning think tank, the study has fourteen corporate participants, and will define conditions under which learners will be most likely to use the new instructional technologies. The study examines the types of marketing media used, timing, managerial support (e.g., allotting time for the employee to take the training), relationship to the learners' performance reviews, portability of the skills taught, and whether the training is considered prestigious within the organization. Preliminary conclusions include that employees seem more likely to enroll when given the opportunity to train at a learning center, which may indicate a lingering desire for the traditional way of "going to training." However, high start rates are also attributed to certification as a training result, and blending the course with other forms of instruction.


Robbie Smith, Department of Energy, showed an action-filled, humorous video as an example of how mixed and matched technologies can be used to energize employees and get them involved and acceptive. "Don't just stand up there and present dry material," she said, "do whatever you can do, work with the LAN managers, the techies. You have to keep them coming back, but you have to focus on technology levels the learners can deal with." She also reviewed ways for sharing technology and resources across federal agency lines. The Government Alliance for Training and Education (GATE) and the Federal Government Distance Learning Association (FGDLA) are primary networking resources; both share information on . Other sites to check out: the Federal Learning Exchange, and the United States Distance Learning Association, In light of decreasing workforce numbers, decreasing budgets and travel allocations, these grass roots organizations are providing very important links for agencies that need to meet increased demands for employee training.

Problems in evaluation methodologies were discussed by Robert Wisher, U.S. Army Research Institute, Christina Curnow, George Washington University, and Christine Maitland of the National Education Association. The topic is of great interest to academics as well as to DoD and other federal agencies, but results of numerous studies seem, so far, to be inconclusive. Several reports are available: see, for example, for benchmarks of success in distance education in a study conducted by the Institute for Higher Education Policy; or (click on Highlights, then the report on Distance Learning, in PDF) for the Army Research Institute report.

Michael Bergan, FAA, spoke on the FAA@work Futures Group, which is staffed by a cross-disciplinary team and is developing new resources not only for distance learning within the agency, but also for facilitating e-government. The project goal is to fuse people/knowledge/learning/technology networks throughout the organization. All, hopefully, will feed into the FAA mission of safety, security, and system efficiency. So far, the group has formed partnerships with the Department of Justice, Indian Health Service, and George Mason University. "We learn faster by sharing," Bergan said, inviting contacts by email: michael.bergan@faa.gov. You might also want to check out the federal knowledge management network site: www.km.gov.

For further information regarding this article contact Sareen Gerson at sareen.gerson@osha.gov.