Project Report: NARA Records Management Training

Client
Gary Rauchfuss, Director
National Records Management Training Program
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

MIST Team

Project Team (The Hive)

Amanda Dinscore Basir Nekmal

Project Manager Facilitator/Instructional Developer

Melissa Solorzano Cynthia Moore

Visual Design/Developer Instructional Designer
 Introduction

The Hive team has created a customizable face-to-face training product, as requested by

the client, on Records Management for the National Archives and Records Administration

(NARA) and the employees of federal agencies that are responsible for managing records. The

NARA maintains billions of government artifacts dating back to 1775, including pages of textual

records, maps, charts, architectural and engineering drawings, photographs and graphics, motion

picture film, video and sound recordings, and over a hundred terabytes of electronic data.

Preserving this data is important for the workings of government, for purposes of research, and

to provide information of value to citizens. In order to effectively manage and maintain these

records across multiple agencies, all employees who process federal records must receive

training within sixty days of employment with a refresher training annually.

Although an e-learning course had previously been developed to address this need, with

the publication of NARA Bulletin 2017-01, it had become outdated. Using the content from the

e-learning course, we were asked to create a set of PowerPoint slides that could be adapted and

used in face-to-face instruction sessions by the 270 individual agencies that are required to meet

these training requirements. It is estimated that up to 200,000 employees may participate in this

training.

Project Description

Our team has produced a set of PowerPoint slides that can be used in a face-to-face

instruction environment. While there is a great deal of content that is applicable to all federal

employees, it also includes placeholder slides for agency-specific information. Included in the

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notes section of the slides is guidance for the instructor on adapting the content to suit their

agencys needs. The presentation is divided into eight sections with corresponding activities, as

well as a set of review activities at the end. It is designed to be presented in a classroom setting

and access to computers is not required.

In addition, we have created a Learners Guide that includes handouts and activities that

accompany the presentation which should be distributed to employees before the training begins.

Design Decisions.

Our team initially struggled to make sense of all of the content that was provided to us.

To organize our work, we divided it into eight sections that we could then assign to individual

group members. While this wasnt a part of the original e-learning module, we did find it helpful

for the development of the training and believe that it will also help students and instructors.

Additionally, with the transition to a face-to-face presentation format, much of the interactivity

of the e-learning module was lost. For this reason, we decided to integrate at least one activity

into each section in order to promote engagement.

Evaluation

Since the training is not a finished product and will only be in its final form when it is

adapted by an individual agency and used in an instruction setting, we did not think it would be

useful to conduct usability testing. When the final draft of the PowerPoint presentation and

Learners Guide was submitted to the client, he stated, The products are aligned with the intent I

had for the project. You've done a great job translating the online version to a f2f course that an

instructor can lead. He further added that, although there were a few minor technical and

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content adjustments he would make, the presentation was otherwise ready and would soon be

used to train employees of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. The client

stated that he would teach this initial class, obtain user feedback, make adjustments as needed,

and then make the product available to all Federal agencies to use for training their employees.

Finally, an existing evaluation form, the NARA Learning Center Course Satisfaction Survey,

should be distributed at the culmination of each instruction session to obtain further feedback.

Teamwork

In our team, we organized our roles in the following ways: Amanda Dinscore served as

project manager, Cynthia Moore and Basir Nekmal served as instructional designers, and

Melissa Solorzano served as instructional designer and graphic artist. In order to promote

communication among group members, we met virtually each week using Zoom. We utilized

both Dropbox and Google Drive to collaborate and share materials with our client. We also

created a project management spreadsheet to organize the content and assign responsibilities.

Challenges

Our initial challenge was simply making sense of all the content that the client gave us,

getting organized, and starting the work. It was also somewhat challenging to work backwards

from an e-learning module to a face-to-face instruction session utilizing PowerPoint slides.

Finally, while Google did help us collaborate, it was challenging for some members to access the

Google tools and to use Google Slides before moving the content into PowerPoint.

Advice for Future Students

For us, it was very helpful to use a spreadsheet to organize the content and keep track of assigned

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tasks. This was an essential first step in order to begin the work and it kept us on track

throughout the project.