Comprehensive training solutions: Our full suite of learning and development services

Our training solutions are comprehensive, innovative, and customized just for you. Whether you’re looking for eLearning, instructor-led training, or blended learning, we’ve got you covered. We develop highly interactive and cost-effective training solutions that will improve the productivity, performance, safety, health, and job satisfaction of your employees.

At PowerTrain, we expertly develop and deliver impactful training solutions using cutting-edge technologies and contemporary trends in training. Our outstanding, multidisciplinary staff includes programmers, graphic artists and animators, technical editors, quality assurance specialists, project managers, instructional designers, statisticians, professional narrators, and analysts.

If you have a training challenge, we can help. Let us develop a unique solution to your organization’s educational needs.

eLearning

PowerTrain understands how adults learn. Using the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) Instructional Systems Design (ISD) model — and our own professional expertise in instructional and graphics design and programming — we develop custom eLearning and web-based trainings (WBTs) that produce measurable performance improvements. We’ll work closely with you to make sure we meet your time constraints, deadlines, budget, and learning objectives to create engaging and highly interactive courses.

Our specific online training capabilities include:

• HTML-based training, or training developed in your learning content management system of choice
  • Articulate, Captivate, Lectora, and others
• SCORM conformance and Section 508 compliance
• Male and female voiceover talent
• Engaging games
• Animation, graphics, and other media development and integration

Example: Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

OPM had a need to help Federal employees and managers build skills around recognizing and managing emotions in order to be more effective. The big challenge of the project came in the need to engage a wide audience from different backgrounds in recognizing how impactful managing emotions (and not managing emotions) can be in the workplace.

Since the majority of Federal employees are Myers-Briggs ISTJs who prefer concrete tools and practical information, we made sure that this course on emotional intelligence (a “touchy-feely” subject in some ways) foregrounded objective knowledge about how the brain works when it comes to emotion. To this end, the course begins with a dynamic video (created by PowerTrain) that dramatizes a relatable road rage scenario and demonstrates how such an experience affects your brain chemistry—and in turn, the emotions you carry into the workplace.

PowerTrain helped OPM fill an important need in the Federal Government by producing a highly impactful WBT, incorporating video and animation elements, high-fidelity simulations, and thoughtful interactions. Emotionally Intelligent Leadership is a course that sticks with you and holds benefits far beyond one’s professional life.

Example: Telework Fundamentals

In the wake of a White House Forum on workplace flexibilities, as well as the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, the role of telework in the Federal Government is gaining momentum and priority. It’s become vital in recruiting and retaining the best and brightest workers and maximizing their effectiveness. So, OPM wanted their existing courses on telework (one for employees, one for managers) to reflect its vital, contemporary status in the Government. In answer, PowerTrain truly changed the face of these courses. The new product has a clean, contemporary look and color palette, and a progressive design.

PowerTrain also increased the interactivity of the course dramatically, taking a course that was almost entirely information-driven and turning it into a series of opportunities to engage. For example, text-driven, summarized scenarios that the user would simply read in the old course became dramatized animations of characters in conversation over different facets of telework, followed by the chance to respond to the scenario and to hear narrated feedback from a telework expert. With these course updates, PowerTrain brought the subject of telework into the lively present where it belongs.

Other examples

Some of our other solutions include:

• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission: An agency-wide computer security annual awareness training, as well as a specialized privacy course
• National Gallery of Art: Tailored online security course customized to the unique requirements of the National Gallery of Fine Art
• Office of Personnel Management: Computer security and human resources (HR) courses, including performance management, personally identifiable information, project management, measuring performance, and addressing and resolving poor performance

Instructor-led training

At PowerTrain, we offer a variety of training solutions, including traditional instructor-led training (ILT). Instructor-led training allows an instructor or facilitator to educate groups or individuals in person by following a PowerTrain-prescribed curriculum. To meet your ILT needs, PowerTrain can develop: a detailed instructor guide, student workbooks, job performance aids and toolkits, assessments, quizzes, surveys, visual aids, and other external educational resources. We even have our own template that provides for instructor guides to quickly become student workbooks (without any rewriting), which saves you time and money.

Instructors may deliver training in a lecture or classroom format, as an interactive workshop, as a demonstration allowing learners to practice certain techniques, or even virtually via video conference.

We can either provide you with a facilitator or help yours be a more effective trainer. We engage students with activities and exercises, bringing the content to life. We design the courses with successful facilitation and teaching methods to engage learners and embrace various learning styles, maximizing training opportunities by building a curriculum that supports students from all walks of life.

Example: Disaster Cycle ILT

After company reorganization and re-engineering, the American Red Cross has revised its thinking about disaster services to a new paradigm: a disaster cycle, and needed its new courses to reflect that. The ILT was an adaptation of the new WBT we created for the Red Cross. In both cases, PowerTrain blended elements of the old courses with the new material to come up with a more interactive approach.

The Disaster Cycle course instructor manual was designed in such a way that it gave even the most inexperienced Red Cross instructors everything they needed to lead a successful training session. By outlining the purpose, learning objectives, prerequisites, preparation, and instructor responsibilities, as well as offering discussion prompts and fun activities to get participants’ minds (and sometimes bodies) moving, PowerTrain created a lively, functional, foolproof instructor manual that we take pride in.

Blended learning

PowerTrain creates an immersive blended learning environment where students receive part of the educational content directly from a facilitator, and the rest of the content via computer-mediated activities. Blended learning solutions allow for the best of both worlds, with active and engaging classroom discussions and student control over their time and pace of learning.

We’ll pinpoint the topics that are best taught in a hands-on classroom environment, where engaging discussions and real-life practice occur, and we’ll separate the topics that are best explored in an online environment, where time is not an issue and content and resources can be explored in depth.

Need something more?

Not quite what you’re looking for? Check out our combined solutions. There are many options available when it comes to training solutions, and most can be combined with others to meet your organization’s specific needs.

Check out what PowerTrain has done for others.

• Federal Cyber Security Training for Federal, State, and local government and DoD personnel, as well as veterans, selected educational, and other organizations. PowerTrain designed and developed, and now hosts and provides help desk support for this cybersecurity training. The site delivers, tracks, reports, and issues certificates for 60 online courses providing over 700hours of training to a target audience of 100,000 personnel. The cybersecurity courses provide instruction on how to lock down sites, perform vulnerability testing, address patches, lock out hackers, and hundreds of other key security topics.
• Government Services Administration: PowerTrain developed and is delivering courses on Federal Travel Regulations, Security Officers, Administrators, EEO, Sponsors, Adjudicators, Activators, and Registrars.
• USCIS, Homeland Security: Comprehensive LMS customization, implementation, and ongoing support for over 25,000 Federal employees. Online training development, delivery, and management of user training plans.
• Executive Order on National Security Professional Development: Developed and implemented a collaboration website and training program for security professionals across the Federal Government.

At PowerTrain, we know that any training solution must support and further your organization’s mission and long-term goals.