Transitioning from the Classroom to Online Training: A City of Los Angeles Experience Michael Gold, PhD City of Los Angeles Personnel Department

 City of Los Angeles  45,000 employees  42 City Departments  Personnel Department responsible for training most generic topics  Individual departments responsible for department- specific training Background

 7-8 Trainers in Personnel Department  3-4 classes per week each trainers  30 students per class Before Online Training

 2008 – City Council instructed Personnel Department to look into online training  We found that online training would:  Reduce training costs  Reach significantly more users than classroom training  Eliminate travel time  Be convenient and easy to use  Contain interactive features The Transition

 2010 – Contracted with vendor to provide online training  Learning Management System  Content Online Training

 Four courses developed for us:  Reasonable Accommodations  EEO  Supervisory Skills  Customer Service Initial Online Training Content

 Staff of 2  Currently have 21 courses  Mandatory course  Disaster Service Worker: 23,562 completed  Preventing Sexual Harassment: 18,254 completed  Non Mandatory courses:  EEO: 774  Customer Service 628  Safety : 774 Current Training Program

 Website we created through which online training can be accessed  Provides resources for department training coordinators and for employees Training Portal

 All supervisor resources in one place  Rules, policies  Brief informational how-to paragraphs  Links to supervisory training Supervisory Library

Issues and Challenges Custom-developed coursesOff-the-shelf courses Time consuming to reviewLimited views Generally cheaperLimited time Generally more expensive

Mandatory v Non-Mandatory Issues and Challenges

 Measuring success  Number of employees trained  Number of courses offered  Positive course evaluations Issues and Challenges

 Even though the vendor is developing a course for you, you are still going to need to devote a lot of time to it. Lessons Learned

 Custom-made courses are generally better value than off-the-shelf courses because you can keep them forever, vs. having to license the courses Lessons Learned

 You need a plan to handle technical issues. Lessons Learned

 Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. Lessons Learned

 More courses  More focus on advertising the training  Require online training to be prerequisite to classroom training  Link competencies required for job with competencies covered in each course Future

Questions?