Global Reproductive Health IT Support list

["Shannon Turlington" <sturlington AT intrahealth.org>]

In regards to SharePoint training, we have already learned a few
lessons:

We started with a traditional training approach, in which we hired an
external trainer to teach in a classroom setting. This unequivocally did
not work, even though it had been useful in the past with teaching
Office programs like Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

The reason it didn't work, I decided, was because SharePoint should
reflect the organization's culture and way of working. Even though our
trainers were familiar with us and our SharePoint implementation, they
did not know us well enough to be able to effectively teach. We needed
teachers who were internal, who were experiencing the system as users.

The other reason it didn't work is that SharePoint was way too
complicated to teach in a classroom setting in a limited timeframe. We
really needed a system for ongoing training that can adapt as our users'
skills develop and their needs change.

So what we did was form a user's group called the SharePoint Advisory
Group, which was open to all staff and is a cross-functional team whose
members are acting as SharePoint gurus for the organization. This group
has made a commitment to learn SharePoint and bring that learning back
to their teams or departments and advocate use of SharePoint in the
organization. In addition, the group working together is helping to
improve our Portal organization, our site management practices, our
policies and procedures--all sorts of topics are coming up. Most people
joined as volunteers but we did recruit a few people. We have meetings
every other week as well as a team site and mailing list for asking
questions and getting feedback from the group.

One task this group has taken on is giving shorter trainings on
specialized topics. This enables us to divide the trainings up into more
digestible chunks and offer trainings on a regular rotating basis. The
group comes up with the topics based on what they're learning and doing
on SharePoint, so they are very topical. For instance, one topic to be
given by our Resource Center Manager will be on how to contribute to the
Portal's information archives; another to be given by someone in
knowledge management will be on using SharePoint to manage a project.

Finally, we're finding that deskside trainings are the most effective
way of teaching SharePoint. We are offering this through our IT helpdesk
and also our KM staff is taking this on to spread out the burden a bit.

Our next challenge is to move this model out to our field offices. We
already have a couple of SharePoint experts in some offices but they
aren't as plugged in and actively consulting with everyone as the group
here is. But we haven't really tackled this issue in a systematic way
yet.

In response to number 2, while we have opened up the ability to
everyone, we are finding it works best if someone takes responsibility
for a particular area on the Portal--is an owner of that resource. That
person can keep things organized and act as a gatekeeper for
contributions. So a training and learning expert might volunteer to own
that section of information on SharePoint. We also have made this part
of some people's jobs--for instance, we have designated a KM specialist
to manage posting and organizing information for the Capacity Project.
We are developing some policies and procedures now on how to contribute,
which I would be glad to share with you when they are done.

I hope we keep this conversation going because there is so much to learn
in what for us is a brand-new area: a collaboration between IT and KM to
systematically introduce virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing to
our organization. I would love to hear what others' experiences have
been using SharePoint or similar technologies.

Shannon

-----Original Message-----
From: grhits-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:grhits-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Julia Bluestone
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 11:39 AM
To: grhits AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [grhits] Questions regarding rolling out SharePoint platform

Hi Everyone, 

Some of your people have been talking with ours, and I'd love to ask
some specific questions to Intrah re: the new CAPACITY portal. Here we
go:

1. Can you share with us some lessons learned regarding training your
staff in use of this platform to share knowledge?

2. Can you share with us some lessons learned regarding how you've
handled uploading documents/materials? In other words, do you have a few
people who do it? Did you train everyone to do so? Would you share any
criteria you developed regarding what is and isn't uploaded? 

That's it for now, I'm sure more questions will follow. Thanks.

Julia Bluestone, CNM, MS
Sr. Quality and Training Advisor
410-537-1814
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