2011 Innovation — Division 1

GOLD: Michelle Fox, Senior Analyst, Advanced Learning Technologies and Workforce Development, U.S. Department of Energy

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recognizes that economic competitiveness in energy and manufacturing technologies hinges on the knowledge and skills of the American workforce and its ability to efficiently learn, collaborate and share knowledge.

DOE helps to facilitate rapid advancements and breakthroughs in energy technologies in biofuels, solar energy, advanced building technology and many other fields. Collaborative knowledge sharing can vastly accelerate progress and the use of immersive learning technologies. DOE needed to dramatically increase ease of use and access to learning and development opportunities, improve sharing and collaboration for development of energy technologies, and improve the process by which workers assimilate and rapidly apply newly acquired skills.

DOE has developed and integrated a number of open-source learning and Web technologies. It calls the program NTER; an open-source set of Web-based learning tools that includes a fully functioning, secure, accessible course management system, 3-D authoring tools, advanced collaboration capabilities, sophisticated portal technology, content sharing and content management coupled with search capability.

Dedicated partnership defined how the project team worked together to develop NTER technology. The team is composed of government, trade associations, not-for-profit organizations, academic institutions and communities and private companies. The partnership required for project success included not only those organizations that collaborated to create the technology itself but also the organizations that provide the content, which includes government, not-for-profit, academic and commercial organizations.

The impact and benefits of NTER are substantial. In the federal government alone, NTER saves more than $1.1 billion in licensing costs. But more important than license savings and efficiencies is the potential improvement in learning opportunity and access to learning NTER can provide to the American workforce.

SILVER: Sundar Nagarathnam, Vice President of NetApp University, NetApp

NetApp is a $4 billion storage system provider with more than 130 offices worldwide. To maintain its edge in the competitive storage industry, it must provide employees with up-to-date training and current information on products, the company and the industry.

When Sundar Nagarathnam, vice president of NetApp University, joined NetApp in 2008, it had 8,000 employees and annual revenue of $3.4 billion. Nagarathnam recognized a need to introduce a learning platform that could support rapid expansion of the NetApp employee and partner base and accelerate the ramp-up process. By spring 2011, NetApp had 10,200 employees and revenue of $5.1 billion, and the challenge of providing training to support corporate growth of this magnitude became critical.

The solution was the NetApp Learning Resource App, a tool that installs on the desktop and provides access to content packaged around specific topics. Content includes formal courseware, supporting learning resources, language-specific material, community and RSS feeds specific to relevant topics, applicable YouTube content and an electronic performance support system for process/systems related content.

Steven Richey, director, content production and deployment for NetApp, accepted the award.

BRONZE: David Birnbaum, Senior Director of Learning, Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC

Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC has a unique challenge in that half the offices it supports are independently owned and operated. Training and performance interventions for managers cannot be as easily mandated. Further, sales associates in each office are independent contractors, so they are twice removed from any requirement to leverage learning opportunities facilitated by headquarters.

Continuing professional education always has been a key to career advancement for real estate professionals, however, and today keeping knowledge and skills up to date is more important than ever due to the distressed real estate market.

With this need in mind, Coldwell Banker’s David Birnbaum decided to leverage online technology and learning science to create a collaborative environment in an interactive world. The Coldwell Banker Managing Broker Academy, an online learning portal for managers and brokers, is the result.

The portal is a visual gateway offering a one-stop shop to administer training at an enterprise level. It ensures the organization, coordination and implementation of various learning media by automating and centralizing the entire process. It also capitalizes on the power of social networking tools to advance learning and development.