Information Experts

IE’s Work on Department of Education Project Showcases Training Development Expertise

RESTON, VIRGINIA, February 11, 2009—Information Experts, an award-winning strategic communications firm and leading e-Learning and training solutions provider, recently concluded work on the redesign and annual updates for the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Federal Student Aid (FSA) COACH and COACH for Foreign Schools training. The COACH training courses are a series of web-based training tools hosted by ED for use by financial aid professionals.

COACH is an important training vehicle for financial aid administrators, and must be updated annually to remain current with laws and regulations. IE has assisted ED with the annual updates on two previous occasions and was subsequently selected to manage not only the revisions, but also a full redesign of the training to enhance it and make it more modern, interactive and user friendly.

"The FSA COACH project showcases IE's broad talent base by tapping into our pool of skilled development, graphics, usability, instructional design and Title IV expertise," said Laura Green, IE Program Director. "The combination of the new course redesign and the introduction of a new, custom-built content management system (CMS) with an integrated tracking tool will enable FSA to achieve their goals of reducing the hours and costs required to perform the annual course updates."

The 2008-2009 project was the first in a 5 year contract with FSA. The objectives of this project were twofold: first, to enhance and modernize the training, and second, to provide a customized content management and edit tracking tool. Work began with the course redesign and followed IE’s standard web-based training development model. The final product was extremely well received, providing ED with a redesigned course that more than met their objectives of a modern design, increased interactivity and an intuitive, easy-to-use interface.

CMSTracker™, the custom built tracking tool, was also well received and deemed a true success. Using CMSTracker™, the previously time consuming and labor-rich process of making text edits became simple—edits were able to be made by the project team, in real time, and were immediately visible on screen. With many other time-saving features available, CMSTracker™ fulfilled its intent of streamlining the annual revision process, and decreasing the high costs and hours previously required to manage the annual revision process.

UPDATE - March 16, 2009 - The updated FSA COACH training courses have been posted live to the U.S. Department of Education's site. The updated course and design can be viewed at the Department's site (http://www.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/fsacoach/)

About Information Experts
Information Experts is an award-winning strategic communications firm with a wealth of conceptual and implementation experience serving public service agencies and corporations. Headquartered in Reston, VA, we help clients increase productivity, strengthen relationships and improve performance by developing and implementing custom learning strategies and solutions. Information Experts is also a performance improvement solutions provider in the training, e-Learning, and marketing communications industries, which creates innovative learning solutions for government and Fortune 500 organizations and makes us uniquely poised to apply Industry Best Practices. Information Experts, founded in 1995, is an 8(a) woman-owned business.