Adapting Online Courseware to Decrease Time, Engage and Improve Performance
(Room S320D)
30 Nov 17
9:30 AM
-
10:00 AM
United States Army military and civilian supervisors who manage civilian employees must complete the Supervisor Development Course (SDC) upon appointment, and every three years after their appointment. The original SDC online course focused on standardizing course content for supervisors across the Army, and the SDC provided quality information for new and experienced supervisors. While the SDC online content was informative, thorough, and helped to standardize the lesson material Army wide, it had challenges. The Army recognized the need to create new content and application exercises that better engaged learners, and reduced the amount of time supervisors spend to meet refresher training requirements. This paper describes the Supervisor Development Course-Refresher (SDC-R) effort that aims to address several overarching challenges that include: decreasing delivery time while refining instructional integrity, increasing interactivity within the constraints of an online learning environment, evaluating performance, and integrating SDC-R software with the Army Learning Management System (ALMS). Additionally, this paper presents a user study comparing two groups: one completing the original SDC course and the other completing the redesigned SDC-R course. Results compared the original SDC and new SDC-R courses including: participant time for course completion, the number of attempts to pass module posttests, and qualitative reactions to the respective courses. Preliminary results indicate that participants took significantly less time and fewer attempts to complete the SDC-R course compared to the original SDC. Finally, participant feedback suggests that the SDC-R significantly increases opportunities to apply their knowledge.