Challenge
At the National Park Service (NPS), Special Use Park Permitting was a complicated process that required many years of experience to navigate; if handled poorly, the public could (and did) file lawsuits against the agency. What was historically handled by experienced employees was increasingly dealt with by those with little to no experience, but training and resources had not kept pace. The senior sponsor asked Learning and Development for a complete review of training and a consensus-making workshop of all key stakeholders at the close of FY2024 to surface challenges and determine a way forward. This was a critical opportunity for L&D to make an impact in a highly visible mission area.
Complications: Last-minute request (6 weeks notice); Main Interior (Wash, DC) location (booked months in advance); fiscal year end timing (low/no travel budgets) ~25% of stakeholders would be virtual; instructional designer AND senior sponsor moving out to detailed roles.
My Role
As Senior Instructional Designer for the NPS Visitor and Resource Protection training team, I was asked to propose possibilities for a 3-4 day facilitated workshop of 25-30 people with in-person and virtual participants. The intent was loosely defined as a content review and data gathering to determine a way forward.
Complications: I was to move to a Detail promotion as Training Administrator with another Training Center before FY24 close. Our whole VRP team (of 3) was swamped closing out several critical FY24 projects. Facilitators were already booked out–our team would have to facilitate.
Action(s)
I applied a Learning Engineering mindset to surface the many challenges that this group was facing with compliance and rising lawsuits and identify what training might resolve for them. I designed/developed the 3-day workshop around a set of Miro (interactive) online boards to enable anonymous participation around content and key topics and called on a another (remote) instructional designer to support remote participants while I was on-site. I setup the VRP Training Manager with agendas and discussion prompts and the Training Specialist with support agendas and links for technical aspects. I also designed/sent out pre-work to help the anticipated 28 participants prepare. I helped the Training Manager setup and launch/lead the workshop over 3 days, including providing orientation to the interactive board(s) and the learning engineering process of understanding the challenge(s) in context, defining visible learner personas, and establishing a team agreement for engagement.
Challenges: The new Associate Director and legal representation were to attend but had limited availability; agendas needed to be modified on the fly. The Training Specialist and additional Instructional Designer were sick as the week started.
Result(s)
The Reimagination of Park Permitting Workshop was deemed a success by all involved, surfacing key challenges with systems, policy, and processes as well as training needs through open conversation. The data gathered through notes and the Miro board was an enduring record that the VRP team could analyze, and summarize with AI, then export to provide the Sponsor and her co-lead for strategic decision-making about next steps. The VRP team was able to identify several areas where training could help, in the near and distant future. This was useful for strategic planning discussions across mission and for the VRP training team as the NPS was faced with deep budget cuts. Many experienced NPS staff retired or left the agency in early 2025, so the content/data became an enduring legacy of knowledge that would have otherwise been lost.
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