Government agencies reach out to both internal and external learners to provide training and education on many different topics. I’ve enjoyed working with both state and federal agencies to provide a wealth of learning products to enhance government services and to help Americans better understand the work being funded by their tax dollars.
Training for Women Infants and Children (WIC) Staff
How do you engage new staff in learning when they believe they already know it all? I was hired as an instructional designer to work with WIC Arizona on the creation of an interactive training program for new WIC staff. The focus was on initial interviews with potential clients to assess both financial and nutritional needs and provide appropriate services. Many of the staff were already social workers with good knowledge of the special needs of women and children, but the training was specific to WIC guidelines.
To keep learners engaged and interested, the modules included a great deal of interactivity, scenarios featuring real members of the WIC staff, and complex situations that required careful review of cases. My role was to review SME materials including video and visuals and develop interactive storyboards with assessments, scenarios, and images. You can download a full storyboard to see a full module of scripts, interactions, and content.
Making Technical Content Engaging for the Goddard Space Flight Center
Goddard Space Flight Center works with Space Telescope to observe and analyze visual information about the Earth. Through these visualizations, it’s possible to monitor weather and climate change, changes in the Ozone layer, wildfires, ocean currents, and more. The images, however, don’t communicate much to the average viewer–and my job was to select images, interview researchers, and create exciting text-and-image presentations for museum and planetarium use. The intent was to capture the viewers’ imaginations and help them to understand the importance of Earth observation satellites and research. The video below is representative of the visualizations I included in the “Viewspace” storyboards I created.
Clients
