Continue being digital in the Canadian public service
Editor’s Note: As a new member of the Engagement team at the Ontario Digital Service, I was naturally curious about the amazing work of my colleagues. I had the opportunity to sit down with our Digital Services Training Team to chat about their new digital training boot camp. Special thank you as well to Thel Simpson, for sharing her learning experience.
They’re back, and better! After their wildly successful boot camp last year, our digital training team has collaborated across provinces and organizations to bring together the best expertise for this year’s new and improved session: Continue being digital in the Canadian public service: Culture.
Join us for the four-week course to receive twice-weekly emails with targeted videos, case studies and interactive activities that are bite-sized with high impact, focused on how to build a digital culture within the public service, learning from leaders who have been successful on this front.
This microcourse is designed especially for you — select your own learning track and enhance your experience with built-in study group sessions.
Each email contains a core video or reading, along with supplementary readings and activities. The more activities you complete, the higher the badge level you earn for that lesson. At the end of the course, you’ll receive a certificate based on how much work you’ve put into the course.
The Team’s Journey
The digital training team has always emphasized maintaining a digital-first approach in government.
To better support learners, the team has spent time learning about the barriers to courses like theirs. By understanding what tools and structures they can put in place for users, the team has enhanced the online learning experience, while catering to learner needs.
While the pandemic has made digital workplace culture a central part of our daily lives, the team believes that tailored learning and training helps create the foundation for digital productivity. After all, digital is a combination of the right culture, expectations and business models.
The digital training team is multidisciplinary and works in an agile way — meaning they are in a constant state of improvement. This allows the team to focus on the learner and their unique needs and feedback first. This is also known as learning experience design methodology which is focused on meeting learners where they are at by thinking about who they are, what they already know, and how they might prefer to be taught, from start to finish. The result is a tailored learning experience that is both educational and interactive.
In January 2020, the team collaborated with Apolitical to develop a record-breaking 10-week course, How to be digital in the Canadian public service. The course tested a new curriculum format that addressed key concerns from learners:
● Time restrictions: with back-to-back meetings, tight deadlines, and, of course, a pandemic, we are hard-pressed to find the time to invest in our development. That’s why each of the lessons were small, manageable pieces designed for busy schedules.
● Learning medium: the boot camp tested email-based learning, delivering lessons straight to your inbox.
● Interactive format: learners enjoyed Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) style webinars.
Based on these findings, the digital training team reached out to their partners to develop even more tailored, engaging courses for you. “Continue being digital in the Canadian public service” is the first of four microcourses to come.
Of course, such a tall order could not have been completed alone — with the support of their partners, the team worked across provincial public services and other institutions from all over the country. The team increased their efficiency by living the values of a digital workplace, including sharing their work and coming together to refine and improve the curriculum collaboratively.
What makes their new boot camp so much better? All the partners contributed lessons of their own! Last year, the digital training team pulled from the expertise of their partners to improve the content of the boot camp. This year, they took it one step further: after signing up, you’ll receive content that was created by experts of a wide range of jurisdictions and subjects all across Canada. Each lesson includes either a short reading or a video, but also includes further readings, videos, case studies, polls and conversation-starters to explore at your leisure.
Past Partnerships
This isn’t the first time the training team has collaborated across institutions to create a truly impactful course. In addition to the team’s work with Apolitical for last year’s boot camp, they have also successfully partnered with the federal government to deliver a pilot course: Discover digital for executives.
The federal government developed a curriculum tailored to give leadership the tools and support to shift their teams to digital workspaces.
To build on the course, the team then incorporated Ontario content and added it to the lessons developed by the federal government. So far, they’ve had one very successful group. Their feedback? More interactions, please!
“The team is proactive about identifying topics and driving people to the community experts through interactive microcourses,” says Thel Simpson, learning specialist in the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services. “I don’t just sign up for their courses, I finish them. They make the content personally applicable and manageable — with the support of peers built in for your continuous improvement journey.”
The group found facilitated sessions to be the most valuable, as they pool together executives in a way that is not possible in their day-to-day interactions. These sessions became a platform to connect with other leadership facing the same struggles: how to be digital first, while supporting a strong workplace culture.
Looking to the Future
Now more than ever before, being digital matters. Not only have we been asked to switch to a digital platform in our day-to-day life, we’re doing it in a pandemic. Teams are geographically everywhere. We know how to be digital, but we must also now be distributed.
Regardless of how skilled we are, we are always better together. Being digital-first helps us build relationships, improve diversity, and above all, push the boundaries of what is possible. Our digital training team’s expert-driven four-week microlearning program works for your schedule, so sign up today!
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