eLearning in public administrations and authorities

Customer stories | District administration Ahrweiler

June 16, 2021

As a public administration and authority, the district of Ahrweiler is responsible for an area with about 130,000 inhabitants. The district administration fulfils numerous legal tasks, starting with provision of services of general interest, through economic development to building and regulatory law. As direct contact for the inhabitants, the approximately 400 employees must always be bg-faded informed. To ensure this, a regular and efficient transfer of knowledge must be guaranteed. The Ahrweiler district administration has now decided to supplement the training process for employees with an eLearning offer.

Facts

Location: Germany
400 employees
Industry: public administration
District Administration Ahrweiler

eLearning complements traditional lectures

Up to now, the approximately 400 employees have only attended trainings in person to stay up to date with the latest information and process the inquiries of the residents to their satisfaction. In order to be able to meet the advanced training needs of the employees independent of time and location, the district administration Ahrweiler has decided to introduce eLearning in addition to the offer of classroom training. “For us, eLearning is a good opportunity to bring the concerns of data protection and IT security to the attention of our employees, in addition to individual consultation and face-to-face events,” says Detlev Kess, IT security and data protection officer of the Ahrweiler district administration. He is also responsible for the introduction and support of eLearning for these areas.

By changing over to eLearning, the district administration saves time, especially with regard to training preparation and implementation. In addition, it is an advantage that existing courses can be easily activated both for newly hired employees and for colleagues who are changing departments. In this way, new employees go through the same training courses as those who have been in the department for a longer period of time.

Employees also have the opportunity to learn independently of time. This reduces the coordination effort for the implementation of the training courses. Furthermore, individual employees can also be trained directly without the expense and effort of classroom training.

Self-creation with Fellow LMS vs. ready-made content

Currently, the district administration Ahrweiler offers its employees data protection and IT security training with the Fellow LMS (formerly known as Coursepath). The courses are created and designed internally by the employees in charge of the subject matter. Many years of experience with the topics taught to is certainly a great advantage when creating the content. For the course authors, the actual implementation in the LMS is easily done after a short familiarization and test phase. Also, the resources offered by Fellow Digitals help along: Best practice examples and tips & tricks on the blog always offer new insights and ideas for course design. Once the course has been set up, the district administration welcomes the opportunity to use different accounts, each with a different role in the academy, to track and control changes.

It is planned that other subject areas will also be covered by eLearning. Here, however, the district administration is considering ready-made content in order to reduce the time and effort involved in creating it. In the Fellow LMS such ready-made content, among others created by partners, can be integrated without any problems.

For the district administration Ahrweiler, this external support is particularly interesting when it comes to special topics for which there is no internal expert. In addition, there are cases in which the internal contact person has not yet built up the necessary skills to train the other employees. Or colleagues who are entrusted with the creation of eLearning courses do not have the necessary didactic knowledge themselves and are still at the very beginning of the process. Especially in such cases, a pool of ready-made content is an advantage. Thus, within the Fellow LMS academy of the district administration, self-created courses can be flexibly combined with ready-made content from standard courses in the future.

Easy eLearning introduction thanks to user-friendly LMS

For the district administration of Ahrweiler, Fellow Digitals was quickly chosen as the provider for the introduction of eLearning. The flexible design options in the Fellow LMS were decisive. Furthermore, the district administration attached importance to the fact that the eLearning platform is easily accessible to all employees. Here, a web-based tool that requires no installation effort whatsoever and is immediately ready for use is an excellent solution

The fact that Fellow LMS remains easy to use despite its many functions and possibilities was another plus point for the district administration Ahrweiler with employees of all ages. Detlev Kess summarizes: “Similar to Word in word processing, the Fellow LMS is a universal tool for eLearning, whose flexibility and feedback possibilities open up a multitude of conceivable scenarios”. This gives course authors a wide range of options for designing their courses. For example, in addition to various media formats such as text, images, sound, and video, the platform’s various question types can also be used for surveys and expressions of opinion on any topic. On the other hand, there are the learners who do not need any training in the eLearning tool and can start learning immediately. The platform is designed to be user-friendly and can therefore be used by all employees without any problems and at the first go.

Conclusion

For the district administration of Ahrweiler, the introduction of the Fellow LMS is the first step towards digital professional training. For the district administration, it is clear that the trend will continue in the direction of eLearning. Detlev Kess explains:

Digitalization is moving into many areas of administration. So, it is only logical to also provide further education and training in electronic form.

By implementing training courses as eLearning, the district administration Ahrweiler makes effective use of employees’ time and offers opportunities for further education and training, independent of time and location. With the data protection and IT security training courses, the foundation stone for eLearning has been laid. Now the aim is to expand the internal range of courses offered within the company’s own academy and to provide employees with additional subject areas. The Ahrweiler district administration will integrate ready-made standard courses into the platform in addition to self-produced content.