The National Park Service is launching a new online learning portal called the Common Learning Portal to address challenges of its distributed workforce. It will provide a central hub for staff across the 408 parks and sites to access learning resources, connect with colleagues, and share content. The portal will use an iterative design process involving stakeholders to organize educational materials from various websites into a searchable database with advanced filtering. It will also offer social features and governance workflows to facilitate collaboration around building and curating content across the large network of National Park Service employees. The goal is to improve access to training for staff across the various careers and locations.

1. Distance Learning Program
The Common Learning Portal:
Building Collaboration and Content
Sharing at the National Park Service
The National Park Service
November 3, 2015
Dale Carpenter, National Park Service
Zach Wahl, Enterprise Knowledge
Presented by:

2. Distance Learning Program
408 Parks, Historic Sites, or Monuments, covering more than 84 million acres
The NationalPark Service

3. Distance Learning Program
The NPS Workforce
• Highly distributed work force:
– 22,000 Permanent and Seasonal
Employees
– 221,000 Volunteers
– Over 250 separate career fields
– Skilled/educated workforce

4. Distance Learning Program
• Often limited access to networks and hardware
• Current environment includes rich content fragmented
over dozens of websites of varying usability and depth
• Decentralized workforce
• Expertise is found at all levels
• Diverse workforce with many different types of jobs and
skills
The NPS LearningChallenge

5. Distance Learning Program
The Goal
Provide a consistent
navigation and advanced
faceted search, offering
access to a wide array of
learning resources
Provide a means by which
NPS Staff (and others) may
connect, collaborate, and
support each other

6. Distance Learning Program
The Concept
Provide a comprehensive learning environment that ties together
formal, informal, and social learning
Formal Informal
Social
Common Learning Portal

7. Distance Learning Program
Planning &
Prioritization
Design
Workshops
Taxonomy &
Information
Architecture
Wireframe
Development
Content
Governance
Content
Migration and
Seeding
Iterative Design
and
Development
Branding and
Communications
Multi-Stage
Testing
Our Approach
• Highly iterative
process to maximize
engagement with
content owners and
stakeholders
• Workshops capture
requirements and
serve as change
management/commu
nication
• Focus on optimizing
high-value content
and interactions

8. Distance Learning Program
Our Approach
Naviga on
Findability
Taxonomy &
Tags
Search
Func onality
Types of
Content
Content
Format of
Content
(by Type)
Content
Workflow
(Crea on, Edi ng,
Archiving)
Users and
Groups
Access/Permissions
Content
Management
Collabora on
Func onality
Apps
Integra on
Colors and
Styles
Look and Feel
Images
© Enterprise Knowledge, LLC
Naviga on
Findability
Taxonomy &
Tags
Search
Func onality
Types of
Content
Content
Format of
Content
(by Type)
Content
Workflow
(Crea on, Edi ng,
Archiving)
Users and
Groups
Access/Permissions
Content
Management
Collabora on
Func onality
Apps
Integra on
Colors and
Styles
Look and Feel
Images
© Enterprise Knowledge, LLC

9. Distance Learning Program
• User focus driven by workshops and user
stories and visuals in lieu of complex
requirements
• Focus on communications and change
management to support content providers
• Additional focus on enhancing content
through the migration process (tags, images,
508 compliance, and improved copy)
• Long-term planning including functional road
map and governance plan
Key SuccessFactors

10. Distance Learning Program
• Open Source Solution
to maximize
functionality and
minimize overhead and
license costs
– WordPress and
BuddyPress
integrated
• Cloud hosting to
minimize administrative
burden
Technologyand Functionality
• Enterprise Search with faceting
• Sub-site population and tagging
automatically populates
appropriate pages with content
• Searchable user profiles (Expert
Finder)
• Social functionality including
rating, commenting, and badging
• Governance instantiated as
approval workflows
• Fully responsive design for
mobile

11. Distance Learning Program
The Common LearningPortal– Landing Page

12. Distance Learning Program
The Common LearningPortal- Search

13. Distance Learning Program
The Common LearningPortal– The Commons

14. Distance Learning Program
Dale Carpenter
Distance Learning Program Manager
National Park Service
dale_carpenter@nps.gov
Zach Wahl
Principal
Enterprise Knowledge
zwahl@enterprise-knowledge.com
@zacharywahl
Questions?