Guest post by David Palmer, National e-Learning Consultant for DoD/Intelligence, Blackboard Professional Education Division. As an e-learning consultant here at Blackboard for over four years now, I work closely with Military Education institutions including the Department of Defense and other intelligence agencies, to implement e-learning programs.  I focus mainly on distance learning and I often advise clients who are just getting started with deploying online programs. Blackboard has clients all over the world that continue to successfully implement online learning into their education plans.  These training programs can be divided into three major modes of delivery: resident, blended, and distance.

1) Resident-based instruction: This approach is common for clients who want to use Blackboard Learn to supplement a course that is primarily based on face-to-face, classroom-style learning.

Recent cuts to federal travel budgets now have a considerable impact on the way federal trainers approach learning delivery within their respective agencies.  As the President calls for a heavier reliance on video conferencing and web-based capabilities to replace face-to-face training courses, federal trainers must continue to foster core competency and skill set development within their workforce.Here’s our solution: Blackboard Collaborate, a solution that delivers highly effective and engaging online instruction, meetings, and help—anywhere, any time—across your government agency.

Blackboard Collaborate combined with Blackboard Learn mimics face-to-face learning that many federal learners have grown accustomed to- but it’s cost effective.  So if your agency is ready to deliver succession planning, streamline knowledge transition, enhance collaborative learning, reduce training costs, and/or improve mission outcomes, Blackboard Collaborate is the solution for you. Here are some top features of the Blackboard Collaborate solution that will deliver cost-effective results for your agency:

We are excited to announce that the keynote speaker for the 2nd Annual METBUG User Conference is Aaron Silvers, Community Manager for Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL).  The ADL Initiative, established in 1997, seeks to modernize training and education management and delivery within the Department of Defense (DoD). After years of classroom teaching, Silvers taught himself to create interactive learning experiences. His work with various clients eventually led Silvers to join ADL and become a contributor to the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM).

As an early adopter of emerging technologies and lead content developer at ADL, Silvers prototyped content examples used around the world and across the e-learning industry. Aaron consults on how technology enables and accelerates formal, experiential, and social learning. You can find Aaron Silvers online at his blog aaronsilvers.com and on Twitter at @aaronesilvers.

Have you noticed the increased use of social media by federal agencies yet?  Well, the social media blog AllFacebook has.  We recently came across a great article that discusses how each of the executive departments use Facebook.  The article focuses on whether or not those agencies meet accepted practices for customer satisfaction, and most of them pass with flying colors.  For example, all fifteen departments have a Facebook page with a vanity URL, and eleven of the fifteen use a third-party tool like YouTube or Flickr to enhance their presence. Here are some tips with real-world examples we want to highlight:

#1: Create custom pages: Not all Facebook pages are created equal.  When departments and agencies create custom pages, they are able to tailor their content in a way that is visually appealing and draws the viewer in.  Check out this engaging custom page from the Department of Veterans Affairs:

Blackboard has expanded its partnership with the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in an effort to provide today’s soldiers with the 21st-centrury training they need. TRADOC has selected Blackboard Learn 9.1 as its platform to educate more than 150,000 soldiers annually through its Lifelong Learning program, which keeps officers continuously enrolled in classes and provides the ability to pull course information directly into combat situations. This enhancement of the Army’s partnership with Blackboard seems to follow naturally from the Army ‘s Learning Concept for 2015, which lays out the Army’s plan to revamp its professional education methods.