Department Of The Interior Streams To Its Employees

Veltkamp sought to blend both an executive-level consistent message with spokespersons communicating bureau-specific needs. "By seeing and hearing from people who are experiencing the program from the different perspectives, the results are really powerful," Veltkamp concludes. Customization and consistency were two key project objectives which he feels were met in the final ABCM program. "Secretary Gale Norton kicks off the program by talking about ABCM and then there are interviews with bureau level managers and some working level people, all talking about their implementation experience and how it works for them. Each bureau has its own version of the program and this has worked so well that it is something we will build into our future department-wide programs."

Veltkamp and others in the Department of the Interior Office of the Secretary applied similar principles to the development of materials to train over 10,000 managers and supervisors about managing conflict in the workplace. Co-sponsored by the Office of Collaborative Action and Dispute Resolution and DOI University, and drawing on the expertise of bureau and private sector experts, this program uses video to demonstrate a series of short vignettes as well as to provide subject matter expert comments and analysis of each vignette. While the training was not considered mandatory, Veltkamp and the team wanted the program to catch people’s attention and get them excited about the training material. Since release earlier this year, the program has received many favorable comments.

The public, including readers of StreamingMedia.com are invited to watch the program on the Internet. The registration page asks for first name, last name, bureau (select "other"), zip code, and grade (also select "other").

Veltkamp offers a couple of take home messages about producing polished learning content using streaming media. "First, decide how much you want to do yourself. In our case, we outsourced the production of the entire package to Vodium and we couldn’t believe how smoothly it went when everything was managed under a single contract. They provided the video producer and director and they arranged the studio time, the lights and cameras in a local studio. They thought of everything, right down to the makeup and coaching of the employees who acted out the vignettes and they trained the announcer and experts on how to use the teleprompter."

However, to get this kind of help and a resulting training product that grabs the viewer’s attention and effectively promotes Departmentwide initiatives, the cost is significant. The cost for this type of training can be two or three times the cost of developing training that does not include the video streaming and the other features in the Vodium product. "It’s very important to recognize," Veltkamp warns, "that there is an investment to be made; but on the back end, the results can easily justify the cost."