By Mark Brown, Co-executive director (mark.brown@skipatrol.ca)
The warmer weather has brought sunny skies to many parts of Canada – and our modernization efforts are heating up over the summer.
In March, the board of directors gave the green light to proceed with modernization of our Learning Management System (LMS), and work commenced in the first week in June. Ten zones from across Canada will participate in a pilot project this fall with a modernized returning patroller course, and other improvements.
Priorities for this project include:
- Integration with Yeti for streamlined sign-on and update of training results from our LMS to Yeti.
- Online registration for returning patrollers.
- Adaptation of our LMS to support mobile access (smartphone and tablets).
- A means to introduce scenario-based training in a virtual environment, supporting our outcome-based learning approach.
- Establishing offline learning capabilities for patrollers in areas with poor internet.
- Confirmation, validation and modification of internal processes to accommodate these changes.
- Re-working our current content presentation to accommodate mobile and offline access.
- Introducing a few new ideas into content presentation.
After the kinks are worked out in the pilot, we plan to launch our new patroller course in January 2025, complete with online registration and a new patroller on-boarding module. Most of this work will be performed behind the scenes by a team of committed volunteers over the summer.
Why are we doing this? Our strategic plan prioritizes modernizing our processes and training. Last year’s CSP Modernization Symposium gave strong and clear input as to what that means and what it should look like. We’re at the beginning of the making-it-happen phase. There’s a lot of work to be done, and there may be a few bumps on the way, but we have a clear objective and with your support we’ll get there. Enjoy your summer!
This post is also available in: French