GovLoop Academy: Learn It All Online!

The world of online trainings is shifting quickly for government employees. The days of in-person events, conferences, and travel are disappearing. The Office of Personnel Management has been curtailing budgets for trainings, meaning that trainings will need to be moved online – saving the government money and time.

Virtual training has the potential to rock government learning in new and revolutionary ways. As with any new and developing technology, there are various paths that government can travel down as it’s explored and implemented. But what’s the best path for government? How can they make the virtual training journey a success?

At our recent event “The Future of Learning In Government” in Washington, D.C., GovLoop’s founder Steve Ressler gave three simple rules for virtual learning to be a success.

1. Learning must be practical. It must be immediately applicable and available in real time. No one wants to sit through a training event that feels outdated or not relevant here and now.
2. Learning must be social. “People want to learn from their peers,” said Ressler. People want to feel connected and to know that others are undergoing a similar learning experience as theirs.
3. Learning must be mobile. Life is on the go these days, and virtual learning must reflect that. Content has to be easily accessible at any time, in any place, and on any device.

With these three simple rules, we have a framework on how to approach virtual training. Do you have good virtual training experiences that follow these rules? Or have your experiences fallen short of your expectations? One example of great online training is GovLoop’s recently launched platform GovLoop Academy, which Ressler formally unveiled at this GovLoop conference to the audience.

GovLoop started out with the vision of becoming the ‘Facebook for government’, but now it’s more of a knowledge network for government. It’s shifted its focus from social zone to learning utility, and on Friday GovLoop Academy went live. It was inspired by knowledge services such as Khan Academy, Lynda, Treehouse, and Coursera, but GovLoop wanted to bring these types of platforms to government learning, which hadn’t been done before.

So, have you seen the big new resource for government employees looking to improve their performance and effectiveness? Set up a free login, and you’ll discover a website of online trainings for government employees, all of which follow each of Ressler’s 3 rules for online trainings. You can sit through an ever-growing variety of courses that will help you do your job better. Want to learn about having a productive workplace conflict? You can do that on GovLoop Academy. Want to learn how to network effectively? Also on GovLoop Academy. Want to develop a strategic plan for innovation? You guessed… it’s on GovLoop Academy.

And, GovLoop Academy is brand new, which means that it will continue to improve. We’re going to focus on capturing data from our audience and incorporating your feedback to make the experience as good as it can possibly be. You can be part of this process.

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for GovLoop Academy ASAP.

You can access Ressler’s full presentation here.