A One-Stop Shop for Continuous Improvement
By Tess Ellender, Process Improvement Intern
January 3, 2019
The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) highly values continuous improvement and, therefore, continuous education. The Office of Employee Development (OED) at CDOT has created a new “Learning Lane” website for all CDOT employees to have easy access to CDOT’s courses. Spearheaded by Laura Morocco, Training Specialist IV, the Learning Lane website provides staff a one-stop-shop for all things relating to continuous education. The platform explains different curriculums, such as the Leadership Journey, and also has a pages that guide employees through tuition and professional certificate reimbursement. Previously, new CDOT employees had to pull information about continuous education from multiple different sources, if they even knew what resources were available to them at all. With Learning Lane, OED has made it incredibly easy and user friendly to access all the materials employees need for continuous education in one place. Thank you, OED!
The primary benefits of the new Learning Lane website are…
A helpful Learning Management System guide
Descriptions and guides for classes and learning series
Practical information about getting to trainings, including carpooling information and location descriptions
Continuous learning reimbursement information and process
Leadership Journey
The home page of OED’s Learning Lane Website highlights the CDOT Leadership Journey, a series of personal and professional development courses that allows employees to build leadership skills incrementally.
Supervisor Curriculum
Many times, supervisors have different learning goals than other employees. CDOT currently offers a Performance Management course which is helpful for supervisors to take before they conduct biannual performance reviews in April and October. The Learning Lane provides a calendar with the supervisor class schedule, as well as a “What You’ll Learn” section with class descriptions. In this section, you can apply filters to view classes by different categories and characteristics.
OED’s supervisor curriculum offers three types of supervisor classes: foundational compliance courses, people-focused supervision courses, and elective courses. Unlike Learning Lane’s Leadership Journey, supervisors do not have to take prerequisite courses to move on to another. Supervisors do, however, need to take the compliance courses within the first 6 months of being in a supervisory role and the rest of the courses within the first 18 months.
LMS Quick Tips
Arguably the most helpful section for new hires is the LMS Quick Tips page. The LMS is the system hub for everything related to continuous education. On this page, OED provides the process for both permanent and temporary employees to sign up for curriculum.
This page also covers how to sign up and take an e-Learning course, and how to cancel or withdraw from any of the courses. Here, employees can also view learning history and print certificates from completed courses.
This is especially beneficial for employees looking to advance their careers within CDOT, as they have an accurate record of their continuous education to refer to when completing an application.
There is also an instructional slide deck on how to use SAP, the system that houses the LMS system, and is what is used to register for classes.
TETP
Next, is the Transportation Engineering Training Program (TETP) page. Here, employees can find a calendar of construction and pre-construction related courses. Below the calendar is a list of all courses offered with a description of the course. This list shows course curriculum, course format, dates for the course, and other helpful information.
On this page, there is also a “What’s New?” section where employees can read the most recent TETP Newsletter. The newsletter provides a convenient way to stay up to date with all TETP education related news, as well as get an overview of courses scheduled for next fiscal year.
Reimbursement
This page is dedicated to reimbursement for qualifying education and professional development. The page discusses who is eligible for reimbursement, and provides a breakdown of the reimbursement request process for both tuition and a professional certification or license.
There are also helpful links to the Tuition Reimbursement Application and the Education and Professional Development Reimbursement Itemization.
OED has also provided an FAQ section that addresses when to submit requests, tuition reimbursement, certification or license reimbursement, membership reimbursement, reimbursement amounts, receipts, and how to find relevant SAP numbers.
Cool Bonus Stuff
On this fun page, employees can find their training location and learn more about it.
Using a provided map, employees can get driving directions to their class, as well as move the map around and access a list of all of the locations.
Below the map is a complete list of all of the training locations in the state, with detailed notes on how to find the training rooms in each building as well as linked addressed that launches a map for easy driving directions.
Another feature of this page is the Carpool & Ride Coordination section. Here there are instructions to log into LMS to obtain the class instructor’s contact information. Those taking the class can then reach out to their instructor to find out if anyone from their area is going to the same class or training.
