As part of an office application migration project, the city of Amersfoort in Holland trained all its administrative staff to use the new version of Microsoft Office rolled out to all workstations, with the MEDIAplus eLearning solution from ENI.
The city of Amersfoort (Holland) decided to migrate all the administrative staff's workstations to a new version of Microsoft Office. As well as the acquisition of new workstations, the aim of this migration project was to offer employees solid training in Microsoft Office 2007. The training was intended to enable employees to use the Microsoft Office 2007 functions with the same level of proficiency that they had when using Microsoft Office 2000.
The city of Amersfoort has 1 100 employees who mostly have access to computers equipped with Microsoft Office. The migration to Microsoft Office 2007 was scheduled to take place on all workstations simultaneously. Given the large scale of the project, the decision was made to opt for an e-learning training course for all employees affected by the workstation migration. After a selection procedure involving 4 suppliers, the city of Amersfoort opted for the MEDIAplus eLearning solution from ENI. MEDIAplus eLearning offered a very advantageous combination of educational elements: training in the Microsoft Office application in a real environment, training upstream of migration, prior skills assessment enabling a personalised training programme to be generated automatically for each participant, custom programme selection, including a special migration programme adapted to the needs of all the participants, and advanced courses for each target group.
Training in the new version of Microsoft Office started two months before the date the workstation migration was due to come into effect, using
MEDIAplus eLearning's virtual mode. A Terminal Server (Remote Office) with Windows and Microsoft Office 2007 was made available to all employees of the city of Amersfoort. Participants had access over the Internet to a virtual workstation with Microsoft Office 2007, enabling them to familiarise themselves with this new version and take the MEDIAplus eLearning training course, still in a real environment, before their workstations were effectively migrated.
Project approach and organisation
For the entire duration of the project, the city of Amersfoort appointed Mrs Els van Daalen as internal e-learning project manager. As such, she acted as an intermediary between the supplier and all the participants within the city. Working with the supplier, she drew up a list of training needs, set the training programme, organised a pilot training session and finally issued an invitation to all users. All participants were invited to a start-up session to familiarise themselves with the new workstation and the MEDIAplus eLearning solution. Throughout the project, she acted as a contact for the participants as well as for the supplier.
During the start-up sessions, which lasted one hour, a trainer demonstrated the new workstation and told participants how to use the MEDIAplus eLearning solution to learn to use Microsoft Office 2007. At the end of the session, an "e-learning reference card" was given out to participants. Those who did not want to pursue the self-training on their own had the opportunity to register for joint training. The joint sessions took place at the city's computer centre. The joint session participants took the MEDIAplus eLearning course, but received support from an on-site trainer.
The training began with a prior skills assessment to find out about each employee's skills. On the basis of the results of this assessment, a suitable training programme was automatically generated so that each participant only had to learn the functions that they had not yet mastered. The course consisted of explanatory lessons and exercises to complete in the application, in a real environment. Participants could revisit the lessons as many times as they wanted. After their training, participants had the chance to sit a final examination.
After this stage, certain employees, known as "key users", acted as Microsoft Office advisors to their colleagues. They had access to more in-depth training in MEDIAplus eLearning and those who wanted to were able to take a number of advanced courses.
Thanks to the MEDIAplus eLearning solution, participants who had not finished their training by the time the migration took place were able to continue training at their own workstations. The training courses and accompanying documentation are to remain available for 2 years.
The city of Amersfoort's migration project was a real success, as over 800 of the 1100 employees took one or more MEDIAplus eLearning training courses (as some employees were using a dedicated business software package, they did not need to be trained in Microsoft Office).
When an employee had sat the final examination for a minimum of two Microsoft Office applications, they received a Certificate and a CD of the home edition of Microsoft Office 2007 from the city of Amersfoort's internal training department. During the four months leading up to the migration, 426 employees had already sat two or more final examinations. Out of the 90 key users, 68 took one or more training courses.
The migration to Microsoft Office 2007 went smoothly, and Amersfoort city officials and users alike expressed a high degree of satisfaction.