Program Overview
The Support Foundations program was designed to teach new Datto Support Technicians the "foundational" knowledge, skills, and behaviors they need to perform well at their jobs. The topics covered span many areas concerning soft skills and technical troubleshooting.
The week-long Support Foundations program was initially scoped with Support Leadership Stakeholders and Subject Matter Experts over the course of a couple months. The content areas were determined through standard needs assessment methods, and the design and development of each course within the curriculum was divided among several Instructional Designers. I was an active part of all phases of training development, and was the primary resource for visual design and illustration for the program.
The program was initially designed as a primarily instructor-led learning experience, but the COVID-19 pandemic and work from home conditions of the learners required us to redesign the curriculum for distance learning over Zoom video conferencing.
The Five Pillars eLearning
This eLearning introduced techs to the competencies they would be evaluated for on the job. A primary consideration for the design of Foundations was to introduce any evergreen knowledge content in interactive eLearnings, while reserving skill-building or practical application in instructor-led sessions. The techs would learn the competencies they would be evaluated on in this gamified eLearning, and then return to the "classroom" to practice scenario-based activities together.
Engaging Gamification
The Five Pillars eLearning was storyboarded in Adobe Illustrator and developed in Articulate Storyline. It integrated all the evaluation parameters for technicians into a heavily gamified, story-driven learning experience. Above you can see the protagonist, LearnBot II, fighting the "Beast of Apathy" in a custom-programmed "boss fight" quiz that takes inspiration from classic RPG video game combat sequences.
Evaluation
The competency rubrics used to evaluate technician performance were made available after the training was completed. They were then used as tools in the classroom to give techs the opportunity to evaluate the performance of their peers in an objective manner.
