Internship Overview

They say when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade, which is, often more difficult than one would think. Our original plan to formulate a method for delivery and tracking of Facilities Management (Facman) Safety Training was quickly tossed on its head with the advent of COVID-19, a work from home initiative for many of the administrative staff, and the new protocols introduced for those who were required to be on campus. These sudden changes drove us in a different direction as we made adjustments to move the intended project away from a training plan to focus on more immediate needs.

Although I had already logged the minimum required hours for the internship by the start of the fall semester I was determined to continue to make progress on our original project, the Facilities Management (Facman) Safety Training initiative.  I felt that with the introduction of a Training Workgroup , consisting of members from all departments within Facman who assigned and tracked trianing, the work I had done before the COVID shift would be beneficial to this group.  The working group’s quest was to review processes from each area and see where we could share knowledge for all types of training throughout the departments. I had completed my draft of what training could look like if housed in Canvas and presented it to the group during the Spring of 2021.  More details can be located on my CU FM Canvas Project page.

In Summary


Clock face walking to the right

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Although the work accomplished during the internship took an unexpected twist, I feel that time spent working with the team was well spent and very beneficial. I look forward to wrapping up the proposal for the initial project and moving forward with creating a training program that is easy to navigate, effective, as well as relatively easy to transfer tracking of training to integrate with the SkillSoft/HCM environment the university uses.

In closing I would like to extend a special thank you to Jeff McClellan and Nancy Portner, the team I worked closely with during this internship and hope to continue to work with in the future as we strive to create an engaging, effective training system for Facman at CU Boulder.

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Facilities Management COVID-19 Return To Work Training

Image by Wilfried Pohnke from Pixabay

Many of the Facilities Management (Facman) staff found themselves in an unfamiliar work from home environment, learning tech tools they either had not previously been familiar with, or had very little experience with. The essential services staff faced a new work environment with with new protocols for handling equipment, cleaning, and the institution of social distancing among other things as they returned to campus to prepare for faculty and students in the fall. Our quick project shift to support the COVID-19 efforts found us creating COVID-19 return to work training video specific to all Facman staff, followed by a project to transition the in person STOP (Safety Training Observation Program) training for supervisors to an online format. Completion of these two projects allowed us to assist with preparing those required to be on campus to return safely as well as facilitating completion of the Facilities Safety Officer’s, Jeff McClellan, goal of ensuring all Facman supervisors and managers had completed the Supervisor STOP training within 2020 calendar year. Although the focus of the work we targeted for the internship changed I worked closely with Jeff over the summer and into the fall to complete two projects to facilitate COVID-19 related changes. I have also created a draft shell for the FM Safety Training program that I hope to complete and propose in January of 2021.

Stack of colorful folded cloth masks

Our first project was to draft the Facman Return To Work Safety Training Video, implement the iterations and updates requested by the Facilities Management Directors, then the CU Boulder COVID Campus Review Team.  The final video was completed within a few weeks, finalized, and rolled out as required viewing for roughly “x” Facilities Management staff prior to their return to campus. The video introduced the new protocols for returning to work safely in May and June and a tracking system was incorporated to ensure completions were recorded in SkillSoft to ensure all staff completed the training prior to returning to work.

The video was longer than would normally have been desirable in a training environment, as evidenced by review of the watch time stats, for me it was confirmation of information read and discussed in classes over the past two years. The good news was the information at the beginning of the video applied to everyone and towards the end it became more specialized. I saw this as an opportunity to put my best foot forward with CARP slide creation, minimal verbiage, and in depth interactions with those who may be key players in future endeavors with regard to future training for Facman. I decided I would save conversations on effective design practices for projects where time would permit. In this case we had already consolidated a good deal of information and time was of the essence so we proceeded with rollout

Summary of YouTube stats for the Return to Work Safety video
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Migrating Supervisor STOP Safety Training To Zoom

I returned to the Facman Safety Training program project, however as it became apparent that most administrative staff would be working from home for an extended period of time we realized that the STOP training, that my first cohort competed during the first quarter of the year, would need to transition to an online format if the goal of completing training by year’s end was going to be met. As our project shifted again I began assisting on the small team that was working to make that a reality.

I continued to work closely with Jeff to navigate the move of the six-week course CU Boulder had purchased from Du Pont online.  The knowledge I had gleaned from participating in the first cohort in the Spring of 2020 was invaluable when it came to understanding the direction and priorities of the course. This second cohort would consist of two online classes facilitated through the Zoom platform with Jeff as the instructor and a team of a host and a moderator working in the background to find ways to engage participants, many of whom were not familiar with an online learning environment, and foster online participation for a course that previously been taught in a highly interactive classroom environment.  The course consisted of slides, videos, and workbooks purchased from Du Pont, however as we moved the slides and videos online we also incorporated online group discussions, breakout rooms, and the use of Kahoot.it at the end of each unit to serve as an interactive way to determine if participants were reading the workbook and completing their weekly homework.

View of Kahoot Final Standings as viewed on participants phone on left side and classroom screen on right side.

Prior to each class I created a set of notes for the host and moderator of the session.  These “moderator notes” would serve as a guide for those running the technical side of class.  Meeting and training on Zoom was new to a majority of the people encountering it and having a document to follow the class flow allowed those in the roles to learn how to assist in a Zoom meeting or training.  This also gave the instructor the freedom to focus on training and not what needed to happen next.  The instructor would advance the Power Point deck when he was ready and the rest was up to the host and moderator.

The host followed the orange text and the moderator the green, black was reserved for the class flow.

Check out the host/moderator guide by clicking this link.

 

 

Throughout the course we used almost every Zoom tool, and would also needed to teach the learners how to use the tools.  In preparation for the rollout, a session held before the first classes, I walked through a mini training with each host/moderator team to teach them the tools.   We tested out Screensharing, annotating a screen share, breakout rooms, monitoring chat and participants, muting participants who left their mike on, etc.  We also looked at how to monitor chat, private and public chat during the meeting, and how to show participants where the reaction buttons, chat, and their other tools are.

A five minute overview was given to learners to showcase the Zoom tools, then, as you can see in the recording below. Jeff  introduces the STOP format and we see a bit of the flow of class and the learners learn to use some of the tools they will need.

We recorded the classes and met after each class to review and discuss how the class went.  The videos were edited and prepared for those who were not able to attend to schedule a make-up class that would be led by one of the training team.

Wheel Of Forced Participation

Colored prize wheel with names on it, white instructions say "Click to spin or press control+enter.

As we prepared to launch the third cohort of two classes we added a “Wheel of Forced Participation”, participation tickets, tickets for winning the Kahoot.it review game, and a leader board to be shown at the beginning of each class as participants joined the class. Participants would be able to choose which prizes bucket they wanted to drop their tickets into for the prize drawing held during the last session.  In preparation I began updating the host/moderator notes to scale them down and add indicators for the Wheel of Forced Participation and where participation tickets would be available to enable the host to track tickets earned and add them to the leader board.

Screenshot of leaderboard created in Excel

Infrastructure & Sustainability Training Working Group

Although I had already logged the minimum required hours for the internship by the start of the fall semester I was determined to continue to make progress on our original project, the Facilities Management (Facman) Safety Training initiative.  I felt that with the introduction of a Training Workgroup , consisting of members from all departments within Facman who assigned and tracked trianing, the work I had done before the COVID shift would be beneficial to this group.  The working group’s quest was to review processes from each area and see where we could share knowledge for all types of training throughout the departments. I had completed my draft of what training could look like if housed in Canvas and presented it to the group during the Spring of 2021.  More details can be located on my CU FM Canvas Project page.

In Summary


Clock face walking to the right

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Although the work accomplished during the internship took an unexpected twist, I feel that time spent working with the team was well spent and very beneficial. I look forward to wrapping up the proposal for the initial project and moving forward with creating a training program that is easy to navigate, effective, as well as relatively easy to transfer tracking of training to integrate with the SkillSoft/HCM environment the university uses.

In closing I would like to extend a special thank you to Jeff McClellan and Nancy Portner, the team I worked closely with during this internship and hope to continue to work with in the future as we strive to create an engaging, effective training system for Facman at CU Boulder.