USDA adds social media to online training

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is upgrading its online job training programs to include blogs, wikis and other social media. Stanley Gray, USDA's director of e-training, told Government Executive magazine that incorporating more forms of social media into the AgLearn software should help motivate more Agriculture Department employees to seek training.

"The belief that you can just put content in your learning management system and people will use it isn't true," Gray said at a public meeting last week. "There's a generational issue. This is a change management issue to get people to use online training. You have to lead people to it."

Kathy Fallow, a senior training analyst for AgLearn, said employees often find mandatory training to be boring and a chore.

The Agriculture Department launched the AgLearn system in 2004 to provide one-stop learning services for USDA employees nationwide. Besides its numerous course offerings, AgLearn has almost 1,000 videos available in its leadership development track and a library of 12,000 reference books.

For more on USDA's social media training online:
- check out this Government Executive article

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