SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR |  RSS | | REPRINT
|
Training Battle Plans: The State of Michigan Makes the Most of Multimedia
September 22, 2008
By Margery Weinstein
When the state of Michigan needs to educate its employees about a change of policy or procedure, it doesn't simply turn to the modern era's communication standby, mass e-mail. Instead, the state's trainers put their messages in multimedia, in the form of Webcasts, to get their point across.
Webcasts using Mediasite by Sonic Foundry are particularly suited to the training needs of the state, says Larry Doele, executive account manager, Michigan Public Health Institute, and a producer of Webcasts with Mediasite. The state has two main kinds of training it needs to address, he explains. One is to a specific group such as individuals within a department or specific state school system. The other is training more akin to public information than corporate training, such as educating the state's citizens about a new law. With such large groups of dispersed people, an engaging training communication tool is essential. "That's one of the reasons they went with Mediasite's rich media Webcasting technology," says Doele.
So far the most viewed Webcast is a 10-minute treasury department presentation recorded in April about why property taxes are going up while house prices are going down. "That's had more than 7,000 views to date," he points out. After the Webcast, the state loaded the presentation into a resource portal so the public could download the presentation as a reference tool. That portal also includes a link people can click on to ask questions about their property values. Once they click on the link, an e-mail form is brought to the screen to transmit questions to the Michigan treasury department, which answers them daily.
The Mediasite technology and format also have been used to educate employees. Recent Webcasts targeting the state's workers include one on computer security for employees of the department of information technology (IT), and another on inventory control for the treasury department's workforce. The IT security presentation stressed the importance of securing state computer networks, explained what happens if data is released unintentionally or a state government computer is stolen, and gave workers security emergency contact information.
Like most of corporate America, Michigan increasingly is training via e-learning, says Doele. "It used to be face-to-face training done regionally," he says. "But now, with the cost of gas and the limit on state government funding, we're seeing more of them moving to Webcasts to get the information out to as many people as possible that they need to train."
One of the most recent Webcasts focuses on teaching Medicaid providers, or health-care providers who accept Medicaid, about a new Medicaid claims system. That means 50,000 health-care providers will need to be taught how to register all their physicians and facilities into the system. Over the course of an eight-week period in the spring, information and regional training sessions were rolled out to Michigan's health-care providers. But prior to that effort, the state produced 13 Webcasts that covered every aspect of registering into the system's portal. As the process of converting to this new claims system progresses, more Webcasts will be added. At press time, another series of Webcasts was planned, aimed at educating the state's military veterans about the benefits and services they're entitled to. "Many veterans from the Iraq War are electronic- driven and computer-savvy, so [the state department of military affairs] was looking for ways of touching those people much faster than they had in the past," says Doele. "This is closer to the way they're used to getting and want to get information."
Indeed, the Webcasts are going over well with audiences. Doele says the customer satisfaction survey e-mailed after Webcasts reveals an average satisfaction rating in the high 80s to low 90s. With state revenues down, and a statewide executive directive issued against non-essential travel, the success of these Webcasts helps, says Jim Hogan, information officer, state of Michigan, "particularly as one of our business drivers was to figure out how to get quality training out to our employees in the field with a limited budget."
The state still does in-person classroom training, but mostly just for the disciplines that require hands-on instruction, such as for the IT workers who program the state's computers. It is also the IT department that Hogan says he wishes training could be stepped up for. "We would love to ramp up our employees on new programming languages, specifically on Java and services-oriented architecture," he says. For now, though, Michigan is partnering with its community colleges, many of which have extra capacity in unused classrooms and instructors.
Other approaches to training include an exploration by state departments of employee and public wikis, blogs, and workforce social networking sites. Hogan says the state is using an open-source wiki to help rewrite one of the systems it uses to collect data on the state's 1.9 million students. "We're using the wiki to build a community of interest around the project," Hogan explains. "We're giving project updates, and encouraging school districts to send us questions via this invitation-only wiki." If it continues to go well, similar wikis may be rolled out for other projects.
Back to Training Battle Plans
Back to main article: Training Special Section: Focus on Government & Military
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS |
|
|
| Back to Training Index |
|
|
