Lessons learned from running a record-breaking boot camp on digital transformation
By Nikki Alabi and Daphnée Nostrome
Editor’s Note: The core team behind the boot camp include current and past members of the team re-imagining digital service training across the Ontario Public Service, including product leads, Nikki Alabi and Michael Kehinde, Ph.D, Lee Fay, Melvin Christopher, Kim Monastyrskyj, Elizabeth Sajfert and digital training team founder, Daphnée Nostrome.
As part of the Ontario Digital Service training team, our goal is to help public servants build skills and behaviours associated with the Digital Service Standard. We work to help public servants adopt internet-era practices and technologies to improve how government works.
Last January, we launched a free, 10-week boot camp, How to be digital in the Canadian public service, to test email-based learning — bite-sized, curated skill-building activities. You can read about the making of the boot camp in our blog post.
Like many of you, we are a small (but mighty) team with limited resources but an ambitious agenda. Our work on the boot camp taught us just how far the power of collaboration can take us. Read on for our insights.
What we learned
Main takeaways:
● immersive experiences are key — people wanted more ways to interact with the material and each other; videos were most popular, followed by webinars
● stories about failure and conflicting perspectives on digital approaches captivated people
● be creative about engaging time-strapped learners — folks who didn’t complete the boot camp said lack of time, not content, was the blocker
● Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) style webinars with digital government leaders brought the boot camp experience to life for learners
1. Focus on what learners need.
After running a few events on topics like inclusive design and user research, we discovered that made-for-government learning is what public servants need. People definitely wanted to understand topics like user-centred design or agile. But what they asked for time and time again was how to apply these practices in both a Canadian and a government context.
The first webinar of our “digital public service” bootcamp for Canadian public servants featured @RyanAndrosoff on “Defining Digital Government” — and boy did he knock it out of the park. Now you, too, can benefit from his keen insights! — Hillary Hartley on Twitter
2. Don’t expect learners to come to you.
The term ‘boot camp’ means different things to different people. For some, it will always be associated with training in a military setting. Others may flash to brutal, sweat-fest fitness circuits.
For us, it was a way to test the delivery of a microlearning program. We went that route because we knew public servants valued learning but found it hard to make time for course work. In general, public servants live out of their inboxes, are time-strapped and want learning to come to them, so we experimented with this method to see if it would work.
Bottom line is, don’t be afraid to try something new if it will make learning more convenient for your audiences.
3. Put learners at the centre of the design process
The greatest lesson we got from this is that user-centred design works.
Our goal was to ensure we created a boot camp that met the learning needs of public servants. So we ensured that our user groups guided every step of the development process.
For example, we:
● surveyed learners, set up a working group to discuss needs and gaps
● socialized the curriculum with learners in interviews
● tested prototypes with learners (diary studies)
● made changes as needed based on learner feedback
4. Apply agile methodologies
It’s easy to think that agile practices are strictly applicable to tech, but it’s possible to design learning experiences using agile practices.
Our team:
● was empowered by Ontario Digital Service leadership to take risks
● was multidisciplinary — including user researchers, content designers, learning specialists, subject matter experts
● used an agile approach — held daily stand-ups, completed work in chunks, circled back with team and learners to refine our priorities
● worked in the open — with Google docs, retrospectives, company-wide discussion boards (Yammer)
● gathered and examined data throughout the process, and changed things based on what we learned
5. Run virtual events to bring learning to life
To keep people engaged, we used a show-and-tell approach by running two virtual Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) sessions.
The first AMA was a conversation with Ryan Androsoff, Director at the Institute on Governance, who discussed what digital means in the Canadian government. About 800 people signed up from across the country and as far away as Belgium!
The second AMA focused on provincial approaches to leading digital transformation. Jaimie Boyd, Chief Digital Officer for British Columbia, Natasha Clarke, Chief Digital Officer for Nova Scotia and our very own Hillary Hartley, Chief Digital and Data Officer, were on-hand to answer questions and share insights.
Both events saw the highest number of participants for an Apolitical webinar.
6. Team up to deliver
As a small team with an ambitious agenda, we rely on partnerships to deliver learning. It allows us to pool expertise and resources to get more work done.
That’s why we:
● worked with training teams in Ontario, Yukon, B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and the federal government
● partnered with Apolitical to reach learners through their global platform
This collaboration turned into a first-of-its-kind pan-Canadian learning partnership. We were constantly awed and inspired by the work happening across the country to up-skill public servants for today’s digital age.
7. Dig a little deeper — find out why people don’t complete training
After the course, we sent a follow-up survey. About 302 learners finished the follow-up survey, with 56% being from Ontario. We also wanted to understand why people didn’t complete the course, so we surveyed and interviewed people. Respondents said they intended to complete the course, but got pulled in other directions and found it hard to get back on track. Interestingly, people who found a learning buddy or completed the course as a team found it easier to complete the course.
All of this leads to a larger question — how can governments make learning and skills development a priority?
Another question to consider — in a world where people search the web for learning tutorials on an as-needed basis, should course completion rates be the only measure of learning success?
What we achieved
Record-breaking numbers
The boot camp launched on January 21, 2020, drawing a total of 5,400 registrations. This marked the highest number of registrants for any of the Apolitical learning boot camps.
Out of 5,400 learners:
● 2,579 were Ontario public servants, or 47% of all learners
● MGCS (Ministry of Government and Consumer Services) reported the highest number of learners
● 17% of learners signed up as a team — and showed higher completion rates
● 1,276 or 39% of learners completed all 10 weeks
● 557 or 21% of Ontario public servants completed all 10 weeks and got their Certificate of Completion
● Approximately 2,100 learners or 39.4% of participants completed at least one learning activity — breaking the five to 15% average completion rate for online courses
As a result of the boot camp, Apolitical saw other upticks in their numbers. They saw the largest single-day jump in new registrations on the boot camp’s launch day. And now, more people from Canada are registered on Apolitical’s platform than from any other country.
Enhanced understanding of digital in Canada
We asked learners a few questions to gauge whether they understood key concepts.
Over 90% of survey respondents said the boot camp improved their understanding of:
● what digital means
● how they can apply digital tools, concepts and culture in their work
● Canadian digital government trends
● agile, iterative development processes
Learners went beyond digital
Digital is a catch-all word rife with complexities. It describes internet-era customer expectations, tools, tech, processes, culture, work practices and a host of disciplines like agile or data management. As such, it’s not an easy concept to grasp or describe.
That’s why we found one comment particularly relevant:
“Digital is a terrible term really, because people associate it with “technology” and it’s really about process, looking at user centric design, agile, multi-disciplinary, learning processes and THEN looking at digital solutions.”
What’s next
We handed the boot camp over to the federal government’s Digital Academy so they could add more content, make it available in French, bring on more provincial partners and open it up to even more people.
On our side, we’re working on developing more learning programs. And as always, we continue to explore ways to make learning more relevant to public servants and remove barriers to learning.
Stay in touch
Did you know we’re on Twitter? Follow us at @ONDigital / @NumeriqueON to stay up to date!
Stay safe
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Please note: Many of these photos were taken in the early months of 2020. Continue to visit covid-19.ontario.ca to get the updates, learn how to protect yourself and others, or find out what steps to take if you think you have COVID-19.
