Platform research & development
Simplifying the Employee Experience: Connecting NextGen Learning to the Single Window Approach
The number of learning platforms available to public servants is contributing to the challenge of finding relevant learning content. Modern development and the continued growth of the Internet has made it easier for organizations to create their own digital ecosystems filled with content.
At the Canada School of Public Service, we have five different learning experience platforms (LXP): our website, our intranet site, Moodle, Drupal and Busrides.ca. This means that School employees are expected to search five different platforms to find relevant learning. Each platform is capable of publishing the same content such as text, images, videos and podcasts, however, only two of them are connected and use the same search engine.
Now imagine that you are an employee at a different organization. In some cases, you will need to access departmental learning with the same type of content via your own internal LMS, assuming that your organization is lucky enough to have the funding and expertise to operate one.
Next, consider that GCIntranet, GCconnex, GCcollab and GCpedia also publish similar content. Products from the pre and post Blueprint 2020 era, these platforms were intended to facilitate collaboration and the sharing of information across organizations, and, in my opinion, have been very successful in doing so. However, it is not apparent how or if they will connect with the other systems in the future.
“…a typical public servant is expected to search over a dozen platforms to find relevant content they need to do their job.”
Finally, more and more organizations within the Government of Canada are using third-party platforms, such as Medium (almost forgot to mention this one while I was writing), Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, to publish content. If we tally up all of the platforms, a typical public servant is expected to search over a dozen platforms to find relevant content they need to do their job. And let’s not forget about the imminent arrival of Office 365.
How do I quickly and easily find the information I need to do my job?
What we hear from our users
Our users frequently ask the NextGen Learning team 3 questions:
- Learners ask us: How do I quickly and easily find the learning content I need to do my job?
- Instructors ask us: Where should I publish my content to reach my learners?
- And administrators ask us: How are we supposed to track all of this?
And the answer is simple: it depends, what are you trying to do?
Simplifying the employee experience (EX)
In 2014, the School introduced GCcampus to the Government of Canada. As part of the initiative, a new front-end was added on top of our iLMS to improve our learner experience (LX) by making content easier to find. This allowed us to organize and present our content using applicable metadata and tagging. We built several sections including Programs and Series, Communities, Topics, Business Lines and Audiences. However, the results from our interviews, heatmaps, web analytics and usability tests are clear: few people navigate our learning platform using our categories. Instead, the most commonly used feature is search. Furthermore, most learners arrive at our sites via 2 means: targeted e-mail marketing or a deep link to a course from their intranet site.
Looking into the future, one way to expand on the success of the search feature would be to provide an LXP that shows all #GCLearning. Our research of the learning market has provided us with several examples of platforms that leverage the same experience we find on YouTube and Netflix. Their browsing experience is straight forward and their search engine is simple yet powerful. Additionally, the learning content presented in the search catalogue is not limited to content stored on the LXP. In fact, modern xAPI technology has made it possible for us to recommend and track learning outside of the platform.
Simplifying the user experience is anything but new to government. We’ve already seen an example of the Canada Border Services Agency’s (CBSA) Single Window Initiative where 9 departments and agencies have streamlined the sharing of data. By doing so, they were able to balance the needs of organizations with today’s globally competitive business environment. The benefits include simplified processes for users and a decrease in the cost of doing business. So in true 2020 Vision, why not imagine a world where #GCLearning follows suit and the public service employee experience is improved?
Want to get involved?
There is a group of us who are trying to tackle the issue of content findability. The NextGen Learning team regularly participates in meetings with the Learning Management System Community (name is subject to change). This growing community is made up of several learning units within various organizations across the public service. It is here where we share our experiences with learning platforms and tackle issues around access to learning. If you are a public servant interested in being part of the group or would like to know more, you can e-mail us at csps.userexperience-experienceutilisateur.efpc@canada.ca or feel free to send me a direct message on Twitter.
Want to learn more about NextGen Learning?
You can read my previous blog entitled The Premise of NextGen Learning here.
Disclaimer
Though I use we and our throughout the post, the views and opinions in this blog represent my own. This story presents the feedback we’ve received from learners, instructors and learning administrators, our findings of a competitive analysis of the LMS market and our vision for the future.
