"The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes."
Benjamin Disraeli
GOVERNMENT, BUSINESS AND NON-PROFIT  
Curriculum Design andTraining
Read Some Examples of Curriculum Design and Training Initiatives

Providing individuals with the skills necessary to ensure productivity, growth and achievement is essential to the success of an organization. Effective training results in strong morale and a productive workforce.

We provide a wide variety of custom and tailored training solutions. We assist clients with the development and delivery of training programs, as well as provide support on the back-end to assist our clients with the ongoing evaluation and revision of their programs. We provide training and support in technology applications and systems, as well as management and leadership topics such as team building, leadership development, strategic and operations planning, change and transition management, communications and public speaking. We also assist clients with helping their staff develop critical interpersonal or "soft" skills. The goal of our training programs is to help our clients help themselves, so we provide Train-the-Trainer workshops to client staff, as well.

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Examples of Curriculum Design and Training Initiatives

Managed a training development project for a team of program leaders and subject matter experts within a large federal agency. Our facilitator assisted with planning and implementing a week-long Master Class in environmental analysis, helping build an engaging and active training agenda, arranging on-site hotel and venue needs, and providing on-site feedback on program effectiveness. Her work with the team was vital to the success of building a course offering to provide advanced training to biologists that would increase the effectiveness and efficiency of analyses for environmental effects, thereby improving conservation outcomes for at-risk species. The facilitator served as a neutral party, commanding the respect of the entire cadre and helping the team work through competing visions on the syllabus and instructor's guide. She focused the cadre's time by organizing and streamlining the course agenda and ensuring the cadre could deliver materials to meet tight deadlines. During a course pilot event, she helped participants and the cadre complete course activities with facilitation coaching and onsite adjustment to course materials, as the pilot feedback warranted. Success from the pilot event brought agency support for ongoing offerings of the Master Class. As the course has continued, participant and teaching cadre feedback indicate that the Master Class met its objectives for addressing agency needs for increased analytical efficiency and improved mentoring networks.

Worked collaboratively with a consulting partner to support one of the largest water and wastewater utilities in the nation with their deployment of Oracle's Customer to Meter (C2M). As part of their Organizational Readiness Team, our support involved pre-deployment training materials development and coordination, Hypercare support for their Customer Care representatives immediately following go-live, and in-depth billing issue resolution support. We also provided data analysis of over 1,900 Hypercare support requests to identify lessons learned and to target future training needs which were detailed in our after-action report. Lastly, we supported the management of the Training Team's SharePoint site to ensure all training materials were archived and transitioned to the client for their ongoing training needs. Overall, Opportunity Knocks' support enabled the client to successfully deploy C2M on time in keeping with a legislatively mandated timeline for a new rate structure, in addition to affording a modernized client billing platform that provides a foundation for future IT upgrades.

Facilitated a custom designed training session for the cadre of program assistants within a regional office of a large federal agency. The session focused on the topic of influencing--understanding what influencing is and its importance to the participants' roles within the organization, exploring their individual influencing preferences and behaviors, introducing an influencing framework and tool to improve influencing empowerment and effectiveness, and creating individual action plans to improve influencing approach. The program assistants were able to practice their influencing skills through large and small group activities. As a result of Opportunity Knocks' work throughout the session, the participants achieved each of the workshop objectives, gaining a richer understanding of their brand of influence, the circle of influence, and how to continue to improve and adapt their influencing approach.

Developed and implemented an end user training strategy for a federal government agency with 90,000 employees. This program included e-Learning, both virtual and classroom curricula development, learning aids and classroom/online training delivery to engage participants and end users on the agency's technical competencies in new and emerging unified communications technologies. Resulted in 80% of the agency trained in new technologies and a reduction in call volume to the Enterprise Help Desk for user error-related questions.

Developed and implemented an enterprise wide technical training strategy for a federal government agency. Partnered with key organizational stakeholders and program managers to define IT roles and responsibilities/skill gaps, create training measures, and provide input to training curricula. This ensured all 350 technical staff members were equipped to manage the ongoing deployment of the new technologies after they received the training.

Developed an organization wide Manager training program for a national media communications organization. The program included consistent training requirements for all Managers, development of an intranet clearinghouse of all existing in-house training opportunities across the organization, as well as the development and facilitation of several custom tailored Manager training courses such as Building Healthy Teams, Recognizing Employees, and Performance Management Goal Setting.

Developed and delivered a comprehensive training program and support materials for an enterprise governance, risk and compliance project. This assisted IT executive leadership in improving its current capabilities at meeting the Federal Information Security Management Act requirement to continuously assess compliance of the IT environment with internal policies and other guidance. Our team has published 48 desk guides, including one for a specific solution which allows 10,000 users to document compliance with contractor FISMA annual security training. In total, more than 1,000 employees and contractors have been trained on a variety of Archer solutions.

Worked collaboratively with a consulting partner in designing multiple Leadership Development Program modules for the Washington DC area's largest health care provider. Partnering with several stakeholders to incorporate their insights and feedback, our design team developed the structure of the workshops and participant activities, suggested video content, and performed content editing and final materials formatting to ensure that the final versions were ready to be printed according to the overall project schedule. We created everything needed to facilitate the workshops--PowerPoint slides, the facilitator and participant guides--and outlined content for additional workshop needs such as webinars, video scripts, and visuals. Once the design of each module was complete, we contributed to the implementation of pilot programs to smaller audiences, train the trainer sessions for all workshop facilitators, and provided ongoing support for participant recommendations throughout the execution of the workshops.

Designed training curricula (classroom and Camtasia Self-Study) and conducted customer service training workshops for a DC neurological services provider. Managers and staff enhanced their skills through participation in custom designed, interactive, and engaging activities. The client has since measured an improvement in customer service.

Worked with a Federal agency to implement a train the trainer program focusing on transition management in preparation for deployment of major modernized information technology systems - a project with an average annual information technology budget of over $300 million.

Devised a structure for strategic planning for a corporation, and trained the staff on how to use the structure.

Created a train the trainer guide for a non-profit health organization. The guide established a framework for effective facilitation of meetings and group prioritization sessions.

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