National Training Program Wiki Main Page

Overview and Charge

Members

Co-Lead(s): , Zac Adelman (LADCO)

Members: Paul Miller (NESCAUM), Marc Cone (MARAMA), Michael Vince (CenSARA), Mary Uhl (WESTAR), Brian Foster (AAPCA Training Comm. Co-Chair, TX), Jason Rayfield (AAPCA Training Committee Co-Chair, Mecklenburg County NC), Nancy Kruger (NACAA), Mark Buford (NACAA Training Comm. Co-Chair, Northwest Clean Air Agency WA), Darcy ByBee (NACAA Training Comm. Co-Chair, Air Quality Division MO NDR), Adam Baumgart-Getz (EPA OAQPS), Mary Ann Warner (EPA OAQPS)

Conference Calls

August 5, 2020

Action Items

Justin: send current list of rescheduled NACT courses to the MJOs
Laura: communicate topics from the checklist that are outside of the scope of the national training program to the MJOs
MJOs: send online evaluation questions to Zac
Delivery WG: update course/instructor eval for online delivery
Zac: Schedule a call to discuss next steps with permitting training
Delivery WG: review and propose an approach for ADA compliance with online training delivery
Curriculum WG: organize approach for how to move forward with online permitting courses (Zac to facilitate call)
LMS WG: send out an ask for participation in LMS discovery discussion with contractor next week

Agenda

Online NOWCC update
EPA Training requests, checklist and progress
Permitting training, updates and next steps
ADA compliance for online courses
LMS procurement update
JTC Fall Meeting - dates, logistics, topics
APTI 474 (CMS) instructor manual
National training needs assessments

Call Notes Online NOWCC update

Working to reschedule courses in August, waiting to see how the first course went; may need to extend the # of days of the courses
Justin will send the most recent schedule for the NOWCC training that includes the online format classes
Kara comments that the NACT training for NESCAUM went well; MARAMA was really helpful in getting Kara up and running with facilitating with GoToWebinar; held practice sessions and worked with instructors to get comfortable with the platform; class included instructors to manage the course and help with Q&A; another course is scheduled next week(?)
NOWCC has a GoToWebinar license now and they will be able to get a second if needed; EPA is using that license to train up the NOWCC trainers and get them comfortable with the platform
- Is this license only for MJOs that don’t have licenses? No, it’s to be used for any of the NACT courses as long as there isn't overlap
When WESTAR announces trainings people have been coming out of the wood work, concern is the too many people will sign up? Did you have this problem and what did you do?
- Kara did run into this, they asked NESCAUM states to pick 3-4 for each state
- Next week they have 60 students signed up, and will need to narrow that list
Class size cap at 30?
- Too early to increase the number of people in the NACT classes; need to get people comfortable before we boost numbers; in the interim think about what it would take to grow the number of people in the classes
- Is the 30 really the number to cap? It’s been the cap used in the past and EPA thinks it should stay the same
- First classes will be smaller and then we’ll evaluate how to increase
MJO training coordinators should be putting the evaluations together, GoToWebinar should be used for the evaluations; custom questions can be built into the webinar systems
- Kara to send evaluation to Delivery WG
- Use GoTo attentiveness metrics
- Delivery WG to look at customizing the evals for online delivery

EPA Training requests, checklist and progress

As EPA is diving into this and the next steps, will not be able to deliver in October, looking to November or December
In June EPA reached out to training stakeholders use the checklist to share ideas for new/updated courses, pleased with the responses and input
106 ideas from 9 states and DC, and 2 locals, 1 MJO, 1 tribe, and several EPA people
Generally the topics across the curricula at all levels with the most interest are basic/foundational topics, air pollution basics, and planning; not a lot of ideas on modeling; 40% of ideas outside of scope of curricula, i.e., how to deal with difficult people, or indoor air quality
Next step is to connect with the key folks in EPA that work on the topics that were suggested; their help is needed to fine tune specific course level topics, do they have additional source materials
Not yet working on priorities
Tentative plan for putting a course development plan together for this fall, will be looking for feedback on the draft plan and through the process; want to keep this an open process
Re: the responses that are outside of the scope, will EPA be able to funnel these back to the MJOs; it may be outside of EPA’s scope but could be something that the MJOs could act on; EPA will communicate this other material

Permitting training update

What are the next steps?
CenSARA got good responses from students on the Trinity course
LADCO is scheduling intermediate permitting with Trinity for OH EPA
EPA can help with this if it's tasked to a workgroup (Curriculum?)
Zac will schedule a call to discuss

ADA compliance for online training

Put this to a workgroup and it will help get EPA’s engagement
Generally ties into delivery, how does it become an ongoing project to share knowledge?
Delivery WG will take this topic on

LMS procurement update

EPA has awarded the contract to Cornerstone;
Initial configuration talks and timelines are coming
Key next steps for this call: will begin scheduling with the LMS WG, migrating users, information, and configuration; EPA will work on the processes to configure the system and then will get us involved to do user acceptance testing
Take initial configuration and go through use case scenarios to verify the system is working
On schedule for an October launch; key is the discovery calls over the next couple of weeks
Important on the discovery calls to get specific needs so that we configure it, we can communicate to the contractor
LMS workgroup would want to do a survey or outreach on how to address the key configuration options; there are a few agency staff that the LMS WG could help with
Need an ask to go out to the MJOs to help solicit state input on the discover phase; 2 hour week of the 17th to have the call with the contractor

JTC Fall Meeting - dates, logistics, topics

Communications WG sent a draft agenda around and looked for feedback;
Feedback suggested that we break up the meeting in 2-3 hour segments; have the fall meeting over the course of a month or two, like a fall meeting series, and have a session each week with each session having a pointed topic
If that format sounds good, the Communication WG can organize a schedule
Start the series in October?
Can organize topics based on timing/readiness
Jackie likes the idea, but it may help navigate around other online events
Do we include state training coordinators to the meeting?

July 1, 2020

Action Items

MJOs: find a short-term solution to webinar system for NOWCC program: licensing and training on the solution
Zac: send charter templates for the WGs
Communications WG?: work with MJOs and EPA to develop a workplan for NOWCC training, identifying the responsibilities for each element of the training life-cycle (i.e., scheduling, preparation, communication, delivery, etc)
MJOs: sent an example report and/or schema for the financial reporting needed to support their training grants

Agenda

JTC Steering Committee and Workgroups: Review roles, scope, and communication (Zac)
NOWCC distance learning/webinars (Adam and Justin)
- Seeking a solution for delivery in the near-term until EPA has the new LMS up and running
- Scheduling
Training program financial reporting in the LMS (MJOs)
- Clarify the “ask” from the MJOs; define objectives and understand EPA’s barriers to addressing these objectives
- What information will be included, who will be entering it, what interface (entry and reporting) is needed, and how will it be used
JTC Fall Meeting (Kara)
Workgroup updates (WG Co-leads)
- Co-leads give a 5 min update on the current WG activities, planned work over the next month, and anticipated interactions with other WGs

Call Notes

JTC Steering Committee and Workgroups

Review roles, scope, and communication across WGs and JTC SC
Example: questions have come up recently about work that goes to different WGs, what goes where and how to prioritize
- Adam expressed concerns about competing priorities
- This discussion should come to the SC: where should the focus be, and what is the right WG, how to shift priorities
- If the process of competing priorities isn’t clear, should discuss with the JTC SC
SC should be having discussions on the evolving scope of the WGs
- Some WGs have taken on new initiatives, e.g., delivery and remote training; before embarking on scope pivot, check with the SC
- Need to align with the overall needs of the community, limit redundancy, and avoid changes that may not be generally accepted/agreed to across the JTC community
If a WG is feeling stressed, may want to modify priorities if assignments are encroaching on scope
SC should periodically check in on scope changes from the WGs
WG co-leads: if we get requests in the WGs to do new work, check in with the SC to help set priorities
Get agenda items to Zac for SC call discussions at least 1-week before the SC calls
- Zac will distribute topics to SC for consideration

NOWCC distance learning/webinars

Seeking a solution for delivery in the near-term until EPA has the new LMS up and running
NOWCC could be challenged by delivery, multiple webinar platforms by MJOs would be difficult; EPA would look for solutions, and NOWCC was going to use theirs, but EPA grant funds can’t be used for webinar licensing
Barrier is that NOWCC doesn't have a webinar solution until the EPA LMS is ready in the fall (~October)
- NOWCC can’s use EPA grant funds for the webinar platform; will be able to use EPA LMS by the end of October
- Possible work around using MS Teams was going to take a lot of time because NOWCC instructors don’t have licenses
- EPA can’t provide the webinar platform
- Option is for MJOs to provide the platform; otherwise will be on hold until there is new a platform
MJO platforms, who's using what?
- NESCAUM: GoToMeeting
- CenSARA: GoToWebinar
- MARAMA: GoToWebinar
- LADCO: GoToMeeting/GoToWebinar/RingCentral Meetings (Zoom)
- SESARM: none
- WESTAR/WRAP: CenturyLink
NOWCC instructors will want training on the webinar systems
- Zac suggests we do this on GoToWebinar because that's most widely available in the community
- Can MARAMA help with this?
MJOs to figure out how to get NOWCC access to GoTo solutions for the next few months until the EPA LMS is up and running
- Add licenses to our existing subscription, use existing licenses?
- What will be the costs?
- MJOs to have a call to figure this out and get back to EPA
Facilitation: who will run the IT while the NOWCC instructors are teaching
- EPA and NOWCC, with NOWCC taking it over in the long term
- If MJOs can figure out the licensing for the platform, NOWCC (with some EPA support) could run and teach
Will NOWCC work with interactive components of the training (pre/post test, polls, etc)?
Scheduling
- If EPA is not starting to re-schedule NACT classes in July, will need to deem the classes cancelled, and EPA will need to pay for cancelled classes
- Will the scheduling be done by MJOs individually or nationally?
- If we have a webinar platform, we can reschedule immediately, giving priority to scheduling based on the schedules before the pandemic
- About 2 dozen classes need to be rescheduled
Who will take care of the logistical course items (announcements, testing, evals)
- EPA and MJOs to work together on a plan for the full delivery of the NACT courses that includes: scheduling, preparation, set up webinar platform, communications, testing, delivery, evaluation, and reporting; who will be responsible for what?

Training program financial reporting in the LMS

Clarify the “ask” from the MJOs
Define objectives and understand EPA’s barriers to addressing these objectives
What information will be included, who will be entering it, what interface (entry and reporting) is needed, and how will it be used
Zac describes that MJOs need to report quarterly on the training activities of their grant; their reports generally include data on the number of classes, the number students, and the amount of money spent each quarter for training
Request is for the LMS to be the centralized location to get this information; the MJOs will be responsible for adding the costs into the database; MJOs are requesting that there is an interface in the LMS to add cost information, and to query the training system for historical information by time period, i.e., to harvest data to include in our quarterly reports
Background on this issue from OAQPS
- OAQPS had to reassure the regions that they would not wander into the financial information
- Confusion came up with discussions with regions; EPA can’t tell regions what the financial information is that they need to collect
Now that Adam is more clear on the ask, he thinks there may be a path forward here; what are the other quantitative (non-financial) metrics?
Is this sensitive financial information? When info is aggregated or broken apart, it can become sensitive
- MJOs stated it's public record and Josh didn't think that it sounded like it would be sensitive info, even at the individual training event level (i.e., contractor costs for an particular training)
Zac asks if we can parse the costs into different categories: contracting, venue, travel, etc.; Adam thinks this should be fine
MJOs to provide example of the report/need to the LMS WG; need to build up the database schema for the information that the MJOs want to enter, and subsequently query

JTC Fall Meeting

Virtual meeting, when and what is the format?
- 3-4 hours/day over a couple of days
Draft agenda is available from the Communications WG; need comments from the JTC
AAPCA fall meeting will be virtual: series of monthly calls in September - October
When is the NACAA fall meeting

Curriculum WG update on virtual site visits

Collecting visual media to replace site visits for some of the APTI and NACT courses
Will be requesting media from MJOs/states/locals on different topics to support specific curriculum areas
Requests will be detailed, i.e., do you have a picture or video of this type of process or equipment
Working on archival and licensing

May 26, 2020

Action Items

Zac: send poll to find another JTC SC call date/time
Zac: send charter templates for the WGs
Chris: schedule call with MJOs to discuss training grant reporting

Agenda

Workgroup updates (WG Co-leads)
EPA Updates
- release of online courses (Adam)
- FACA update (Laura)
- LMS procurement update (Josh)
- Training Grant Reporting Update (Chris)
- Training priorities checklist (Adam)
- MJO needs surveys and EPA curricula assessments (Adam)
MJO online permitting course development (Zac/Michael)
Adjustment to call schedule (Zac)

Call Notes

Workgroup updates

Communications
- Three products in recent weeks: flyer of free online courses, best-practices for e-learning, course catalog of MJO contractor courses and EPA courses
- Working on newsletter of workgroup progress as a way to communicate what the WGs are working on, to summarize at a high level what each WG is doing, and whether there’s communication needed b/w WGs,
Delivery
- Working on online permitting course organization, and instructor list
Curriculum
- Call this Thursday, discussions on SI 105, introductory online course
- Work with EPA on integrating updates to NSR training, PSD, BACT, project aggregation PPTs being developed at EPA; originated from NACAA letter to EPA requesting NSR materials; need work through how to get these new materials into the existing courses?
- Structuring work on curricula learning objectives so that updates to materials can be shared across the training program
- If there are NACT updates needed, fold into other work and take care of it in a single effort
- EPA can use help keeping track of connections between courses and how updates can be shared across program
- MJOs have surveys out to find training priorities in their regions; seeking feedback by mid-July
- Curriculum WG is working to evaluate needs for updates and new courses, working with communication WG
LMS
- Procurement, and training for new users of the system

EPA updates

Releasing three new courses in the next month or two
- APTI 474 (CEMS), APTI 423 (AERMOD) released this week as classroom courses
- June release of APTI 470 SI (monitoring QA/QC)
- AERMOD is going to become an online webinar
- CEMS is a 3-day course, will not be online, but will update APTI (NACT?) 221, looking for people to deliver as a webinar later this summer
Priority checklist for stakeholders
- EPA can’t do surveys without first going through a significant bureaucratic process
- While MJOs are doing surveys to gather info on classroom trainings, it's different than what EPA is doing; EPA is creating a checklist to help to gather and organize information on training materials and demand
Training grant reporting
- Chris will send email asking for times to be available for a 1-hour call to discuss the training grants and how to establish metrics for reporting under the training grant
- Receptiveness in the regions for doing this, want to get some feedback before the call
- Zac asked for a summary of the proposal or slides for the MJO EDs to review before the call
- Effort is based on discussions with MJOs to streamline and automate reporting
LMS procurement
- Package is with procurements office, hoping to put solicitation out for bid in June
- Targeting to award in July; 4-5 vendors that qualify for this solicitation
New EPA training staff
- Two E-learning specialists now work for EPA: Jonathan Bradsher (data librarian), and Ashley Zuco (MS in instructional tech, experience in e learning development and evaluation)
FACA Update
- Feedback from OGC on FACA issues: FACA applies to EPA work in the JTC if they solicit consensus views from the group
- EPA must only seek individual input from JTC members and not collective views of the group
- As long as not soliciting consensus, EPA will be able to work collaboratively and won’t have to establish an advisory committee
- As we work on specific JTC tasks in the workgroups, need to be careful to avoid consensus decision making

MJO online permitting course development

Adjustment to call schedule

Zac to send Doodle Poll to find another call date/time

JTC SC and WG charters

Zac to send templates for charters to define the roles and communication within and between WGs and the JTC SC
As there is a need to reach out to the local and state agencies outside of JTC, looking to hold quarterly outreach calls for the JTC

April 28, 2020

Action Items

Kara/Mary Ann - Send a list (or point to a wiki) of the current Communication WG work items and their status
All - comment on priorities for the Communication WG
EPA - Schedule a discussion/review of the EPA training website when it's available for review by the JTC
Zac - send EPA MOVES class syllabus to EPA

Agenda

Workgroup updates
JTC Initiatives
Rapid Online Training Delivery
LMS Upgrade
Training materials review and update
In-person JTC meeting update
Future call schedules

Call Notes Workgroup updates

Communication WG
- Working with delivery WG on the online course catalog
- Draft best practices guidance on e-learning, recommendations from MARAMA and contractors: how to best host a webinar, suggestions for MJOs and instructors
- In-person JTC/EPA meeting planning: ACTION: please submit agenda topics by this Friday
- Developing list of active instructors
- 1-page flyer on available online courses for state/locals
- Discussion on how to improve communication across the groups; looking at ideas for a communications plan for the JTC
- Looking to recruit state/local SMEs and retirees for trainers
- Close to the limit on how much work they can engage in; what's winding down and what are the top priorities for this WG?
- What is the list of items, can we prioritize these, and who can help
Curriculum WG
- Reviewing intro courses, SI 105 has been a focus area for review; Mecklenburg Co. NC, TCEQ, and NESCAUM states reviewed and provided detail comments on the course as it is now, and how it can be improved; call yesterday to see about how to best take advantage of the comments to improve the SI course, what can be done now, what can be done with the new LMS, trying to categorize the issues; working to improve the quality of SI-105; seeking an APTI106 class for in-person offering for states/locals
- Curricula comments have been reviewed/compiled and curricula are updated, draft final links are on the Curricula WG Sharepoint site, will these be made public? Could be made public, and it will inform the design of the LMS; will have a need to develop a new training program website at EPA to make some products available before the LMS is live
- Open how to make this publicly available
- EPA impressed by feedback on SI 105, EPA dug into some of the issues that needed immediate action, medium term, and longer term actions
- EPA made some immediate fixes to SI 105: improve navigation across modules, tracking completion; course has been migrated to a single complete courses; tracks how many slides have been viewed, can jump to any part of the course rather than 12 separate modules
- After finalized curricula, now matching learning objectives with course-level learning objectives; once they have the matching will be able to identify course gaps and prioritize efforts to improve the courses/curricula, expect this be completed later this summary
Delivery
- Scheduling online courses: APTI 345, 454, and 461; NACT 290
- Can EPA sit in on classes to watch the delivery of the courses, as course auditors; yes
- Give EPA schedule once we have one
- Idea to keep courses smaller with limited attendance and then grow
- Some desire at EPA and regional staff to attend distance learning
- Trinity is going to teach NSR/PSD online for CenSARA states, 2-day classroom delivery adapted to a 4-day distance learning
LMS
EPA Updates
- Where would it be appropriate to tie into other workgroups with EPA
- Working on new training website at EPA; would like to engage with JTC on content and reviewing the site before it goes live.

April 7, 2020

Action Items

Agenda

Review Action Items from March 24
Rapid Online Training Delivery
- APTI-Learn Webinars
- Online Course Catalog
- Training Contractor Engagement
- Expedited Procurement
- Status of the NACT course materials
Feedback from the instructor community
Best practices for e-learning training delivery
In-person JTC meeting around Fall AAPCA meeting in RTP

Call Notes Review Action Items from March 24

Justin Hall: work with MARAMA to organize two webinars on how to use the self-instructional resources on APTI-Learn; to be broadcast in the next 1-2 weeks (timing: 1 week)
MJOs: Identify/highlight courses for their state/local constituents to take, e.g., APTI SI105 (timing: 1 week, send to Zac and MARAMA)
- Sent these out last week, asking states/MJOs to fill these out
MJOs: Identify priority NACT courses for converting to live, instructor lead courses (timing: 1 week, send to Zac)
- In progress
Communication and Outreach WG: work with curriculum and delivery WGs and EPA to develop a concise list of online training resources for S/L staff (timing: 1-2 weeks)
- Draft available
Zac and Kara: develop a "job board" resource to align MJOs online training demands with training contractors who are willing to create the courses (timing: 1-2 weeks)
Zac: send example README.license file to Josh for inclusion on the Sharepoint site with the training materials from each MJO (timing: no urgent)
- License sent; need to decide on materials that need attribution; what gets reposted? Don't want to post too many changes
Zac: schedule a JTC SC call for the week of April 6

Rapid Online Training Delivery

APTI-Learn Webinars
Online Course Catalog
- Looking for comments on the catalog
- Use the online spreadsheet, rather than Excel
- Keeping
Training Contractor Engagement
Expedited Procurement

Status of the NACT course materials

Justin talked to NOWCC instructors about teaching the courses
Some slides left the program with NOWCC instructors; some of them were found and Justin is tracking these down
Mary has B/W PDFs
How do the NOWCC instructors feel about teaching?
- Some courses are focused on hands-on and not sure how to adapt
- Some instructors are open to giving their course online
- Some resistance to webinars, may be generational
Parallel efforts with NACT
- Get the slides for the contractors to work on designing the course
- Work with the NOWCC instructors on learning the e-learning infrastructure and how to break up the courses
There has been resistance to sharing editable versions of the courses, are we still confronting this issue?
- EPA is making progress at gathering these materials
- Justin is digging up slides, only 6 courses don't have editable versions
MJOs: Send specific NACT topics to EPA
See webinar on converting classroom training to webinars

Feedback from the instructor community

Best practices for e-learning training delivery

In-person JTC meeting around Fall AAPCA meeting in RTP

AAPCA meeting is Sept 28-30, may need to add 1/2 day to accommodate rescheduling from spring cancellations
How likely is it that we'll have a JTC meeting? Can we have a hold the date? Focus on OID division dir and staff
Action: Can this meeting just be OID, or do other DDs and/or Peter need to be there?
Communications WG, discussion at the last meeting about how to be engaged? Communications WG can draft the agenda

March 24, 2020

Action Items

Justin Hall: work with MARAMA to organize two webinars on how to use the self-instructional resources on APTI-Learn; to be broadcast in the next 1-2 weeks
MJOs: Identify/highlight courses for their state/local constituents to take, e.g., APTI SI105
MJOs: Identify priority NACT courses for converting to live, instructor lead courses
Communication and Outreach WG: work with curriculum and delivery WGs and EPA to develop a concise list of online training resources for S/L staff
Zac and Kara: develop a "job board" resource to align MJOs online training demands with training contractors who are willing to create the courses
Zac: send example README.license file to Josh for inclusion on the Sharepoint site with the training materials from each MJO

Agenda

Training in the time of COVID-19: discussion on a national strategy to support S/L air program staff as they’re teleworking (All, 35 min)
- Immediately need a webinar on how to access APTI-Learn SI content
- Organizing training community around distance learning
- Access to course materials: latest APTI and NACT slides and training manuals are needed for live instructor-lead online courses
- Keeping other priorities (e.g., curriculum updates and LMS development) moving forward
MJO Content Sharepoint Demo (Josh Minorics, 15 min)
Workgroup updates (WG Co-leads, 10 min)

Call Notes Training in the time of COVID-19

Immediately need a webinar on how to access APTI-Learn SI content
- While it seems straightforward, can we get a webinar out on how to navigate the site; how do you get to SI content; can we collect FAQs
- Great opportunity to promote online learning
- Can we point out particular courses?
- NESCAUM states are asking about SI content access; states are needing some refreshers
- Use it as an opportunity to be revamping the program, heads up the content is out of date
- MJOs can take a look at the SI courses and highlight those, suggestions for particular courses
- Next week or two for the webinar
- What the topics
  - Introduce a new student to APTI-Learn
  - do they need to register
  - how to peruse the catalog
  - how to launch a course
  - differences in the SI and V classes
- collect follow up questions if people have them and if there is a need for a follow up webinar, FAQs
- How many people are we talking about? Potentially hundreds, more than 25 for sure
- There will be enough people to need a moderator/producer to run the webinar
- MARAMA can host up to 500 people, and help with managing/producing the webinar
- EPA system can accommodate update to 250
- Next steps
  - EPA to layout discussion topics
  - MARAMA will host/produce
  - EPA to find times for two webinars in the next two weeks, record the webinar
  - MARAMA will also schedule a practice run
  - Webinar agenda reviewers: Zac, MARAMA, Jeff G.

Organizing training community around distance learning
- Private contractors are being organized to work on the courses? Which courses are already self-instructional
- Which courses are most appropriate for distance learning?
- Track which technology has been successful, which platforms are the most effective
- MARAMA has a lot of experience with online learning, leverage their experience
- Need to put out best practices guidance for online learning during this period: how do you run an webinar; as a presenter, what do you need and how do you prepare?

Access to course materials: latest APTI and NACT slides and training manuals are needed for live instructor-lead online courses
- Conceptually there shouldn’t be an issue with access to NACT slides; if contractors are going to modify/deliver these contents, we should get access to those changes
- NACT courses are already short, and if we skip the field trip, they could be even shorter; can we do virtual site visits? Or Google earth fly throughs?
- Need to license training materials for keeping them in the public domain
- Introductory courses are needed: Instead of 452, got to SI 105; can we create a lab or use instructive feedback to improve SI 105? it’s not a good use of online class time to pursue APTI 452, try to funnel toward SI 105; have an in-class 106 with student discussion group
- A few people from the curriculum WG are reviewing SI 105, will be providing feedback

MJO Content Sharepoint Demo
- Showed organization of the Sharepoint site for consolidating course materials from the MJOs in one place
- MJOs will need to download the materials and make copies, can't edit directly on the Sharepoint site; modified materials can be uploaded back to Sharepoint
- Need to include licenses on the Sharepoint site to dictate the terms of use for the different slide decks
- Zac to provide an example license README to go in each folder of training materials

February 25, 2020

Action Items

Zac and Adam to propose a modified structure for the JTC

Agenda

RTP meeting action item review
Workgroup updates

Call Notes RTP meeting action item review

How to better cultivate training coordinators across the states? What would we do today to get people to join the JTC?
Is there a need to have a JTC for governance, no; that’s what the steering committee is doing; we could cut the top off the org chart and just have the steering committee and WGs, by cutting the JTC off the top have changed nothing nationally; what ever we call the state/locals, doesn’t change because they still have a stake
JTC was locals and states with assistance from STAPPA/ALAPCO; states/locals are already the JTC, is there enough of a demand for states/locals to gather on calls? don’t advocate for duplicity
JTC SC is not clear on how they make decisions, this could play into how to engage locals/states; what are the specific roles; how to decide how to prioritize; what is the report-out function?
JTC was a consensus driving organization in the past but never really that formalized; how much time needs to go into developing the structure?
Does OECA need to be involved? How much do their training resources interface with ours? If there’s not much cross-fertilization, may not serve SC purpose, at least they should be a stakeholder
ECOS needs to be part of the JTC as they represent commissioners and secretaries
NOWCC is not on the steering committee
Rename JTC to something else? Semantics issues calling it a committee because it doesn't have the same structure
AAPCA and NACAA are key resources to what we’re doing to help us gather information and support, invited them to SC because of the importance of the roles they play; need to foster the relationship with their training committees to help them serve their constituencies; they represent everyone, need to be using their resources/communication tools to foster the best program and address major needs
Communications workgroup could use help working on their tasks

Next Call

Discuss WG and Steering Committee charges post-RTP meeting
Zac and Adam to propose a structure for the JTC
Discuss Feb 10 update of the EPA training roadmap, including review of the response to comments document (see attached)

January 28, 2020

Action Items

Agenda

February RTP meeting preparation
Work Group updates
JTC Transition planning for leadership adjustments for the JTC and Steering Committee (my pending retirement)

Call Notes

February RTP meeting preparation

Would like to get ideas on meeting objectives from this group on the call today
Is the list of attendees still confirmed (9 attendees), yes; EPA needs a list 1 week in advance, can accommodate last minute additions, but not ideal
Zac reviewed the agendas for the JTC at large and senior management meetings; descried allocating more time to the JTC part of the discussion, including how to encourage membership from states/locals
- Note that the JTC calls are every other month, not 1x/quarter as stated by Zac
Directors meeting agenda
- General conversations about the training vision, roles and responsibilities for implementation, and general objectives
- Training resources for EPA and MJOs/states/locals to work together to implementation NTS
- Want to keep conversation relevant to the DD level
- How to make things work that require SMEs and program development within EPA, examining resources at MJOs and how to interface with EPA; need to engage DDs in the aspects of the training program that are most relevant to what we’re doing and leave with a clear understanding of EPA and MJOs intents and activities in the training program
- Will discuss resources, staffing and funding at the meeting
- EPA will distribute a 1-2 page summary describing where they are are with the vision/roadmap and success metrics/accountability measures - can still discuss this in the general steering committee meeting
NOWCC may not take an hour, but we should talk about directions and expectations for this program; may be able to use this slot if we go over in another session;
- EPA would like information on what should be discussed; EPA doesn’t have an hour of input for NOWCC
Grant reporting: EPA would like to talk about the process being set up, and EPA is in the process of identifying holistically about the actual requirements; it won’t be a long discussion; can we change or adapt the discussion to what information would be useful to the MJOs; what would benefit the MJOs/states, how could the LMS be developed to provide information that states/MJOs need?
Tuesday evening of the meeting will have a reservation at a restaurant; all attending JTC travelers are interested in going to the dinner (9 people)

Work Group updates

Delivery WG: finished first major deliverable in working with EPA on training delivery guidance; figuring out where to go next with only a few active members in the WG
Planning and Support WG: membership is thin, struggling to find their identify;
- John: this WG was envisioned as a support WG to help the other WG’s focus on their primary functions, but their role in the training program has not been well utilized; is there a role for this WG?; may think about dissolving and distributing the WG members to other WGs; can possibly engage this WG on NOWCC instructors
LMS:
Curriculum: Receiving feedback on curriculum and learning objectives documents; round 1 review is completed with collection of comments, lots of engagement; taking time to go through the comments and working with SMEs to check comments for accuracy; will go back out to states and locals, and tribes for the draft final product; when comments received on 2nd batch will initiate review process

JTC Transition Planning

Will discuss at the meeting in RTP

Next Call February 25 @ 1:00

January 15, 2020

Action Items

Circulate a set of bullets of deliverables for the overall meeting and then check in on those at the end of the meeting?
Revise the senior management agenda with the feedback received on this call

Agenda

Invitees to the RTP meeting
Meeting agenda
- General
- Critique of meeting topics and descriptions; accepting suggestions
- Discussion of goals of each session
- Initial thoughts on who leads each topic area discussion
- Meeting with senior management
- Zac and I will share information on conversations we've had with Adam.
- Discussion of topics and how to present them in the most productive way
Work Groups
Options for inter- and/or intra-work group discussions
Other discussions?

Call Notes

Meeting agenda

Would like to have discussion on the invite list, general topics and workgroup options, and other items that are important for the meeting
General JTC meeting agenda has been styled as a steering committee meeting, questions about whether this should be a more inclusive meeting of other JTC participants; not sure if the meeting space will accommodate a larger crowd
John reviews the draft agenda
Discussion to work in other items into the agenda
Agenda evolved from discussions within the JTC
Meeting attendance, larger JTC meeting would require a bigger recruitment effort to states/locals; we can still have a JTC meeting in 2020, but it would likely follow the steering committee meeting; need to re-recruit into the JTC because the steering committee is mostly the JTC at this point; can we have meeting this summer, or piggy-backing off another meeting in 2020, want to encourage broader participation
Who will be in the meeting in first morning vs afternoon? EPA management will only be in the meeting in the 1st afternoon session
Door isn’t closed to add’l invitations, particularly from state/local to be in attendance and steering committee; looking for ideas from steering committee on state/local members; conference line to be expanded only to the steering committee membership, not to a larger/expanded group
Varying interests and goals, but have a common goal of working through critical things that the JTC and EPA are working on; do we need a written goal/objective on every session? or a general set of goals; what do we want to get out of the meeting?
ACTION ITEM: Circulate a set of bullets of deliverables for the overall meeting and then check in on those at the end of the meeting?
Suggest to expand the JTC and Steering Committee discussion to 2 hours; maybe split across the morning break on the 1st day
Need a workgroup discussion section, maybe during the 2nd day; what are the goals that we want to discuss; what are the critical issues that need to come out the WG discussions; may help better define the discussions for the overall role of the JTC
WG questions on the need for break out sessions:
- Planning & Support - useful to have WG breakout, will be good for the co-leads to discuss goals and what to work on over the next year; could use some help identifying direction over the next year; need to talk about participation; need a clear list of tasks and deliverables to guide future calls; would be helpful to find out from other WGs where planning and support fits in with their work
- LMS: ditto Kara, will find it valuable to gather the members of the workgroup and talk through the procurement process, roles and responsibilities, and further define the task list and timelines
- Curriculum: break-out will involve discussions with EPA people working on different projects to find their priorities (e.g., introductory materials); want to spend time talking about where things stand with the curriculum development
- Delivery: will use the hour to plan for the year
Probably don’t need to use the 30 min prep for senior mgmt session
Senior management agenda
- See December 22 draft agenda sent out by John and Zac; need to get comments back from the group on that agenda, and then send to EPA quickly
- Resources: want to hear longer term plan on resources; EPA is interested in what we can offer from MJO and state/local, in-kind subject matter resources; EPA is happy to have the resources discussion as long as we’re willing to discuss what we can offer as well; STAG discussion will come up organically in the meeting; STAG funding requires sign off from the regions, national holdback is considered officially authorized by national boards, will not be impacted by regulatory actions without sign off from regulatory agencies; every single agency would need to sign off on changes to these funding, think that means we have insulated protection of those funds
- Is the agenda too broad? How can we get through everything in 90 min? What are the priorities?
  - MARAMA: 1,2,4,3
  - LADCO: 1,2,3 and 4 would be secondary
  - WESTAR: agree with Zac, but need to also talk instructors? Is the instructor discussion with the senior management? Hope that EPA will begin to teach classes again; without EPA’s help, won’t be able to offer as many courses, this is a resource issue; if this was an emerging program, EPA would provide support, what about existing programs?
  - NESCAUM: resources and roadmap; instructors are also important to talk about, but maybe not with mgmt; need to have this discussion during the meeting
Action Items agenda item - what do we need to review? EPA recorded these; need to all review the action items and figure out if we need to follow up on anything;
ACTION ITEM: Drop program evaluation topic, add in language about instructors, and then John and Zac send the agenda to EPA tomorrow;

December 17, 2019

Action Items

Agenda

Review November action items
February 11-12, 2020 JTC Steering Committee Meeting Discussion (20 min): status of the planning workgroup, agenda ideas, logistics and head-count
JTC workgroup updates (20 min): what are the WGs currently working on, and where are there critical needs
NOWCC comments/feedback to EPA (10 min): what input can the JTC offer to EPA for the January train-the-trainer workshop for NACT instructors
JTC participation assessment from the December call (10 min): review the current JTC roster and discuss how to improve state/local participation in the JTC

Call Notes

November Action Items

Kara: identify a WG liaison volunteer; status: in progress
Steering Committee: identify meeting planning committee participation by state and local agency staff; status: falling to the steering committee at-large because haven't been able to identify all of the needed participants
Steering Committee: send JTC Steering Committee meeting agenda ideas; status: done, see notes from last call
Zac: schedule next call for December 17; status: done
Michael: send notes on curriculum WG; status: done

February Steering Committee Meeting

Meeting tentatively scheduled for February 11-12
Are people comfortable with 1.5 day meeting? Suggesting for 1 3/4 day meeting, run 2nd day to 3:00
General meeting approach
- Division directors will be available around mid-day on the 11th; will have an earlier part of the meeting/prep for conversations with DDs; then have feedback on the rest of the afternoon;
- February 11 open between 1-3 pm for DDs
- 2nd day follow up from DD discussions, and then planning
- EPA wants specific topics to discuss and specific information that we need from the DDs; EPA wants precise information for the DDs
Talk about specifics about the program that couldn't be addressed in the roadmap questions; when is it appropriate to raise these questions if not the roadmap
EPA responds that the workgroups will be used to address many of these questions, e.g., SMEs
MJOs to come up with priority items to discuss with DDs
Discussion on funding and EPA not being able to predict the future funding for the program
February meeting agenda ideas
- Funding of the state/local/MJO training programs
- Instructor development and course updates
- NOWCC program and resources: how to maximize services and improve instructors
- Set up the in-person meeting agenda to ensure tangible deliverables. We should try to avoid having the meeting be all discussion/idea based. For example, to develop a work plan each workgroup would breakout to develop the work plans/timelines.
- EPA course material review process (status).
- Identify key decision making points/deliverable for the steering committee and JTC; should there be a national training program annual workplan?
- 2021 priorities: EPA-led course updates, workgroup activities, steering committee and JTC activities
- Roles and responsibilities of the steering committee, JTC, and workgroups; do we need to develop charters for these entities?
- Testing expectations of future course materials (student manuals, slide decks, instructor notes and guidance, reference materials, other?), e.g., how to develop a consistent goal for pre- and post-training testing
- Core needs for a solid national training program; development of key performance indicators (KPIs): how to measure progress/success of the training program?
- Other EPA topics/needs from the steering committee/JTC to support their work on training
- Discussion on bigger picture ideas, what are the next steps beyond the roadmap? EPA is wrestling with these; could use a roles and responsibilities document for the JTC
What are the expectations/deliverables for the meeting
- Need to planning for how to support 2021 and beyond
- Check in on what EPA needs our support on
- Get training project moving sufficiently this year and beyond
- Need to talk priorities and how to plan for the future; what level of resources will be available for the future, changes to course development/deployment, how do we figure out where these come from and how they will be paid for; limitations in resources will help drive the priorities;
- EPA wants a 3-year course development workplan by the end of FY2020, but still need to figure what the priorities are for the courses; trying to figure out how to coordinate across the EPA offices and with states/locals/MJOs; still need to talk about what goes into that prioritization system
- Challenge has been on collecting information across EPA, MJOs, and states; process could be smoothed if we could discuss criteria for prioritizing courses; if we can't get to that, need to use OAQPS judgement on the priorities
- What's the bigger picture? workgroups are the place to discuss specific projects and tasks;
- Questions about EPA bigger picture workplan for the national training program; EPA won't discuss workplans with the MJOs but there are areas; EPA won't develop more specific documents at a finer level of granularity than the roadmap
- Other interfaces between EPA and JTC, MJOs, states/local, e.g.,
- Realities of the e-learning side can be frightening because of the resources that are required; how to provide timely training and management of the resources
- Courses are priorities, but also how to deliver them will impact those priorities; what may be a priority course may get pushed down the list because there aren't resources to work on it; while end goal may be to have a particular type of distance learning, it's not feasible/practical and many need to settle on an alternative; need to talk through that process

How to get to the final agenda?
- First day morning: Check in on 2020 trajectory and begin to synthesize the 2021 plan with inputs from EPA and MJOs;
- DD meeting:
- First day afternoon:
- Second day:
MARAMA, CenSARA, NESCAUM, WESTAR will send agenda topic ideas
Zac and John will work on getting the draft agenda together over the next couple of days
Approach: MJO propose agenda and

JTC Workgroup Updates

No critical updates/communications needed

NOWCC

Questions about what is in the scope of this program from EPA; currently assessing what's required of the program by EPA; won't be a quick turnaround project
EPA is doing homework on this program
Comments submitted by Michael and Jeff
A lot of comments from the MJOs, but many of them are programmatic rather than on teach best-practices;
Need to put most of the comments in to a discussion on NACT program at the February meeting
Could the steering committee have a representative at the NOWCC meeting via conference call on the 2nd day? Need to ask Sarah Matthews
Sarah is checking about whether an MJO could attend remotely

Next Call January 28 @ 1:00

November 26, 2019

Action Items

Kara: identify a WG liaison volunteer
Steering Committee: identify meeting planning committee participation by state and local agency staff
Steering Committee: send JTC Steering Committee meeting agenda ideas
Zac: schedule next call for December 17
Michael: send notes on curriculum WG

Agenda

Review October action items
Workgroup updates: co-leads give 5 minute reports on key, recent workgroup activities and inter-workgroup communications/interface needs (20 min)
EPA Updates: progress report on the roadmap, course updates, and other news from EPA partners including EPA/Curriculum Workgroup perspectives on Learning Objectives Review process and next steps (20 min)
JTC Steering Committee In-Person Meeting: formation of meeting planning committee for the early-2020 meeting and discussion of target dates and potential agenda items (20 min)

Call Notes

October Action Items

Zac: collect and send comments to EPA on their training roadmap
- Status: Sent October 31; EPA will reply in December
Mike: send Curriculum survey to Kara
- Status:
WG Co-Leads: Send Kara points of contact for identifying WG interface
- Status: done
EPA: share results from contractor assessment of the LMS requirements list provided by the LMS WG
- Status: presented on a webinar November 13
Zac: schedule course delivery methods review call in late November
- Status: webinar scheduled for December 16 @ 1:00 Eastern
Zac: send updated course evaluation form to the steering committee for review/sign-off
- Status: Updated Evaluation Link
Zac: work with EPA and APTI-Learn contractor to get the new eval integrated into APTI-Learn
- Status: In progress, working on through the Delivery WG
John: form task force to develop an agenda for the next in-person JTC meeting
- Status: In progress, will form and convene the first week of December
MJO Directors/Training Coordinators: develop priorities and learning objectives for 101-level courses to be developed/updated online in the next year
- Status: In progress

Workgroup updates

General communication
- Use this Wiki as the platform for sharing information between workgroups.
- Wiki to include each workgroup’s call schedule.
- Schedule another walk through of the Wiki for the JTC committee workgroup members.
- Wiki could also be used as a reference on JTC committee calls to provide updates (e.g., JTC steering committee calls could be conducted as a webinar).
Planning & Support
- MI participant left her position, now seeking another state participant; her role was as a workgroup liaison
- Talked about WG recruitment, seeking a new person/interest to get a new liaison in place
- Webinar from the curriculum WG
- Good idea to have a liaison, but could fallback to WG co-chairs and Zac/John to take on this role as liaison
Delivery
- Moving from delivery methods to other scope
- Maintaining and updating instructor list, working with Support
- Instructors/auditors evaluation form
- Thinking about other aspects of delivery now, thinking about the entire training experience, not just delivery methods, and what else fits in to the scope
- Is the LMS process going to answer the question of what type of trainings delivery tools are available?
  - In August EPA received a document from LMS workgroup that includes delivery, those are criteria that EPA has used to narrow down the universe of LMS's; working to use this to narrow down the procurement process; everything that delivery WG is looking at will be included in the procurement for the LMS; Chris and Jeff have also been working on the LMS WG to bring the delivery concepts into that WG
- Will support for all of the delivery options be part of the basic LMS functionality, or will be an add-on, separate tool that links to the LMS?
  - Expectation is that the LMS will handle the e-learning delivery (it will be seamless to the users, may be more complex on the back end)
LMS
- On last call discussed further clarifying assessment of the LMS features
- Criteria are uploaded to the wiki, can refer to these criteria and provide input directly to the LMS WG co-leads
Curriculum
- Documents developed for topic learning objectives
- Will send to AAPCA and NACAA training committees for feedback from the states
- OAQPS plans to share curricula to the tribes through ITEP
- Want to confirm the process with the JTC Steering Committee
- Michael to send notes on curriculum

EPA Updates

Putting comments together on response to roadmap in December
Curricula learning objectives being developed with EPA regions; building relationship between OAQPS and the regions, and getting the regions back into training
LMS webinar last month; next webinar 12/11
Delivery webinar 12/16
Checking that the ask for updating the evaluation in APTI-Learn is possible
Collecting existing training materials, while working on learning objectives updates; collecting technical materials for supporting updates
Looking at 100-level course priorities, and the effort to update/develop these courses; trying to figure out resource needs to develop vs demand
Want to look at developing a long-term prioritization system
Reviewing selection criteria for LMS
Planning for NOWCC instructor training in December

JTC Steering Committee In-Person Meeting

Decided that we should have a steering committee meeting before JTC at-large meeting; need planning items from this committee
Feb 12-13 at EPA in RTP, traveling in on the 11th; EPA needs to check if space is open for Feb 13
Meeting planning workgroup
- 3-5 people; EPA (Mary Ann), JTC co-lead (John), 1 MJO training coordinator (TBD), 1 local (TBD), 1 state (TBD); latter two could be selected from NACAA/AAPCA co-chairs or other interested local/state agency staff
- MO is in both NACAA and AAPCA
- John seeking volunteers from MJO training coordinators
- John will talk with AAPCA and NACAA for state/local volunteer
- Commitment will be 2-3 1-hour hour calls by the end of December to plan the meeting (date, topics, length of meeting, announcement)
- Need to craft focused topics for the directors
- Group conversation, break outs, specific discussions with DDs
- When is the committee call? Need to form the committee first; EPA needs to know space and DD roles/activities
Agenda ideas
- Set up the in-person meeting agenda to ensure tangible deliverables. We should try to avoid having the meeting be all discussion/idea based. For example, to develop a work plan each workgroup would breakout to develop the work plans/timelines.
- EPA course material review process (status).
- Identify key decision making points/deliverable for the steering committee and JTC; should there be a national training program annual workplan?
- 2021 priorities: EPA-led course updates, workgroup activities, steering committee and JTC activities
- Roles and responsibilities of the steering committee, JTC, and workgroups; do we need to develop charters for these entities?
- Testing expectations of future course materials (student manuals, slide decks, instructor notes and guidance, reference materials, other?), e.g., how to develop a consistent goal for pre- and post-training testing
- Core needs for a solid national training program; development of key performance indicators (KPIs): how to measure progress/success of the training program?
- Other EPA topics/needs from the steering committee/JTC to support their work on training

October 22, 2019

Action Items

Zac: collect and send comments to EPA on their training roadmap
Mike: send Curriculum survey to Kara
WG Co-Leads: Send Kara points of contact for identifying WG interface
EPA: share results from contractor assessment of the LMS requirements list provided by the LMS WG
Zac: schedule course delivery methods review call in late November
Zac: send updated course evaluation form to the steering committee for review/sign-off
Zac: work with EPA and APTI-Learn contractor to get the new eval integrated into APTI-Learn
John: form task force to develop an agenda for the next in-person JTC meeting
MJO Directors/Training Coordinators: develop priorities and learning objectives for 101-level courses to be developed/updated online in the next year

Agenda

Workgroup updates (20 min): Co-leads give 5 minute reports on key, recent workgroup activities
Interfaces between JTC Workgroups (10 min): How are you expecting to interface with other WGs? What information do you need, and when?
Training delivery methods presentation by EPA contractor (10 min): November Steering Committee call?
EPA Updates (10 min): Progress report on the roadmap, course updates, and other news from EPA partners
Planning for face-to-face meeting (10 min): Jan-Feb 2020 timeframe

Call Notes

MARAMA Update - Marc Cohn taking over for Julie as MARAMA ED
Roadmap update - MJO/JTC group met last week to discuss roadmap comments; have a draft version of comments that we’re working on, started from comments provided to EPA at meeting in RTP, will add examples and clarify, collecting comments from the JTC community; still seeking feedback to send back to EPA by the end of the month; Zac will synthesize comments and put a draft out to the steering committee by Oct 31;

Workgroup updates

Planning & Support
- Talked to Curriculum WG about helping to determine priorities and develop process
- Looking at courses identified by curriculum WG, need to review the LMS to see if the course objectives are accurate
- Intro courses are crucial for updating, expecting a lot of turnover in air agencies, will need the 101 level courses;
- Kara is happy to help with learning objectives and curriculum priorities
- Action: Mike to send curriculum survey to Planning & Support
- Working to provide interface support between WGs; need to know what these interfaces are
- Last WG call on 10/15, selected a WG member to be the liaison between other WGs, to check in with the other WGs, find out about support needed; other WGs should expect to be contacted about interfacing discussion; who’s the best point of contact in WGs? WG co-leads; Planning & Support member will not join the other WGs but will be more in a role to touch bases
- Use the wiki to identify interfaces and points of contact
- Action: WG co-leads to send interfaces to the planning & support WG, and ask for facilitation of the interfaces

Delivery
- Worked through delivery method terminology and options document
- Have a summary document with EPA (Chris) who will be using that for informing work on delivery methods decision support
- Have a revised evaluation instrument that we need to communicate to EPA and their APTI learn contractor for putting in as a new prototype into LMS
LMS
- Last call melded online training that MARAMA has been using to see how it can integrated into the new LMS
- Developed a list of characteristics that EPA is taking back to fold into the list for the new LMS system
- Close to having a list of characteristics to fold into a contract; hoping for draft contract language later this year
- Timeline for finalizing requirements will be needed sooner than later, if EPA had a solid 90% solution moving forward, can start with procurement process
- How can the steering committee weigh in on this process? Can we see this list in the steering committee? Steering committee thought the ball was in EPA’s court
- EPA action: share results from contractors assessment of the list provided by the LMS WG
- EPA wants to start work on the contract as soon as possible because it will take time
Curriculum
- Working on course priority list; seeking priorities from states and EPA
- Not sure on timing for having a discussion with EPA on the course priorities, but will hope to have more info later this week
- Will be setting a shared place for people to access information on priorities and WG efforts;
- Jeff: feel like we’re not going about id’ing priorities the right way, lots of resources are available right now; can we change the focus from looking at courses as they are currently, to what we need; example is to shift focus on developing an online air quality management 101 curriculum, and then roll out from there, to permitting 101, enforcement/compliance 101, functional area X 101; afraid we’ll lose the current resources soon and questioning that we may not be focused on the right things; suggest to get 101 course catalog online, then move on to speciality areas; material may already exist, how to repackage these with modern delivery methods?
- EPA: for the 1st year the course update process has been guided by the JTC; there is senior mgmt attention now, need to work on a system to make priorities, rather than working on priorities for the next year; there is a process for FY2020, what's the process for determining priorities for subsequent years?
- John: there is a pipeline, need to start prep work for future years; clearly a need for long-term planning, we support the 2020 work, need to identify areas that can start as soon as the work queue begins; for the priority setting process, huge need for basic courses to support both face to face and e-learning; could invest in deliverables that pay back quickly and often if we get these new basic courses out sooner than later (2021); in 2020 create expectations for online versions of intro courses in the different areas, in 2021 finalize a longer term priority system, will front load a lot in the pipeline
- Michael: agree that intro courses are a high priority; EPA is adding resources that can help figure out the best way to deliver courses; if we want to take a course and turn into online, do we need to do classroom course first, or can it go straight to online; what's the right order?; how to figure out we’re all on the same page and speaking the same language; JTC members need training on how adults learn and are using the same language
- Are there any issues for going this direction for EPA?
  - EPA: Conceptually in agreement, details will need to be worked out, key thing is to finalize the learning directives in the curricula because they will be the OAQPS contract with the community identifying the specific topics and timing of the courses; will then be EPA identifying the priorities within those learning objectives; EPA is crafting the learning objectives/topics; working on delivery options and figuring out how best to craft materials into different formats
- How can the process be leaned to make the process move forward more quickly?
  - EPA has been focused on learning objectives; a couple things we can do to work together: starting next week EPA will be looking for people to focus on 3-4 courses; need to know what those priorities are; need to figure what the processes for getting OAQPS input up front in MJO course development are, to streamline that process;
  - Is the community already exploring the learning objectives for 101 level courses? There is a need for local/state agency input on the learning objectives for these courses to guide what future courses will look like;
- EPA is challenged by sharing their process with regions/MJOs before putting content out more broadly; EPA is planning for the first time to roll out content to the regions first to get input before the more general release; will be an opportunity for input from state/local through the JTC to EPA on the process
- Oil and gas course review from MARAMA serving as a case study for getting EPA to review MJO-developed material
- Could use more people on the Curriculum WG to help out with the work; waiting for EPA to get through reviews on learning objectives
  - What’s the timing for this? First learning objectives will come out to the EPA regions next week, need to meet with regions before more details on the process;
  - How many courses/subject areas learning objectives are being worked on? Working first on ideal curriculum before looking at existing materials, looking to get this to the JTC in December/January; looking at existing training materials now and taking learning objectives from that material; will compile and look holistically at the learning objectives for the current curriculum
- From the standpoint of working with regions, SMEs will probably go quickly, but regions may not care as much about the learning objectives because it hasn’t been their responsibility; they may want to understand these, but it’s the MJOs who have had the most experience with the learning objectives, more so than the regions; if this is the case, timelines will accelerate; don’t to wait around for nothing;

Interfaces between JTC Workgroups

How are you expecting to interface with other WGs? What information do you need, and when?
Curriculum: Worked with outreach on long-term priority planning; looking at past efforts from JTC WGs on what can be leveraged
Delivery: Looking to work with LMS and Curriculum on the delivery methods list

Training delivery methods presentation by EPA contractor

Zac to schedule a separate call in late November
Call will focus on methods for delivery and options, informed by delivery WG

Planning for face-to-face meeting

Reserved room at EPA RTP, need to narrow down; Feb 17 is a federal holiday, try to avoid
Propose a smaller steering committee to craft the agenda: EPA, 1 workgroup, + Zac & John; Mary Ann from EPA
Zac to send updated evaluation to steering committee for review/sign off; work with EPA to implement into LMS

September 12, 2019

Action Items

Attendees

Agenda

Communications and coordination between the work groups, explore current work group activities that intersect with other work groups (10 minutes)
Follow-up to last week's RTP meeting
Course update priorities, near-term needs (15 minutes)
EPA Training Roadmap comment planning, preparation for September 24 St. Comm. discussion of road map and feedback that is needed 5 minutes)
Curriculum development presentation by EPA (15 minutes)

Call Notes

John's pre-call charge to the WG co-leads:

I would like each work group to tabulate communication needs and overlaps (negative and positive) between workgroups that we need to start working on.  Please do so from your work group's perspective – what you can do to help other work groups and what they can do to help your work group.  Be prepared to suggest ways to ensure adequate communication and proper coordination and where there may be a need to refine the duties among the work groups.

Communications and coordination

How do states integrate their evaluations with the national efforts?
- We need to determine what all of the different efforts are and how to pull these together
MARAMA is working on how to do online training, including accountability and assessment
- Putting a paper together on how to do a good webinar, how to use interactive features, how to use pre- and post-test, need to review in the Delivery WG

Delivery WG
- Expect to create a decision system for course developers to determine the best delivery format for their materials
- Expect to create a list of features/parameters needed in an LMS to support the most common delivery formats for training
- Need to interface with both LMS and Curriculum WG's on the timing of when they need information on delivery; what would be the best format to receive the information
- Need to interface with both LMS and Curriculum WG's on their current thinking around delivery and where they see needing support in this area from the delivery WG
- Overlap with the Planning and Support WG on instructor list, training materials evaluation, and communication of these items; need to better define the roles
- Identified some communication breakdown with the LMS workgroup in their work to get information on delivery methods from an EPA contractor; would like to be pulled into these discussions

Curriculum WG

LMS WG

Planning and Support WG

RTP Meeting Follow Up

MJOs agreed to provide feedback by the end of September, will discuss at the 9/24 Steering Committee Mtg
EPA is not seeking a consolidated form of comments, looking for individual comments from MJOs; also gathering comments on the roadmap from the EPA regions

Course update priorities

What is the level of detail needed in defining the course priorities? Course only, or course + delivery format?
Need to get some priorities identified and quick progress made
See Curriculum WG priorities table of 25-30 courses; the table has high demand courses with materials that are outdated
Can EPA provide a list of the courses that they're working on
- Debbie identified CEMS, AERMOD, Ambient QA/QC
- FY2020 looking at permitting courses, working with AQPD to identify the trainings to work on in FY2020
EPA needs a list from the MJOs to develop longer term workplans
MARAMA will share their oil and gas course with the national community, hoping EPA can use an publish these materials
- EPA would like to be involved early on in the course development process to contribute to learning objectives of the course; it will expedite the OAQPS review
- Who is the contact point for reviewing the O&G course materials
It will be helpful for the MJOs to identify the courses that we plan to develop/update and get EPA plugged in early
Charge for MJOs to tabulate courses they are working on (or looking at working on) and send to EPA; want to make courses generally usable by the larger community
What happens next to develop the coordination process with EPA? Will add to the agenda for the 9/24 steering committee call
What are the 3 courses?

EPA Training Roadmap comment planning

Comments can run into October, if needed
MJOs will work through comments that seem to be in conflict, before sending to EPA
Timing of the delivery of these comments will be set on the 9/24 call

Curriculum development presentation by EPA

See slides
Identify learning objectives for all courses
Want to develop curricula that could be customized into a training program based on a agency/student needs
Develop draft curricula by early 2020

March 22, 2019

Action Items

Attendees

Agenda

Call Notes

What are all of the interfaces between the different WGs?
EPA advisors: Kristen advising on Curriculum; Adam and Eric advising on LMS WG; Adam advising on Steering Committee; need for advisors on Planning/Support and Delivery WGs
John needs to have conversations with the different WG leads to reconcile tasks; e.g., Planning/support WG a better place for evaluations than delivery WG
WG are tasked with developing their own scope, and providing updates to John

WG Updates

Planning and Support
- Communication: it has to do with helping special communications, not that they will be communicating all training opportunities across the country, it's how compile and present needs for the training program; not to replace the role of the MJOs
- While EPA won't co-lead, will be EPA advisors, need to set up call with OAQPS and all WGs to identify advisors:
- Will need to have periodic updates on LMS functionality (updates and existing functions/refreshers)
- Take on evaluation reports from delivery
- Evaluations and reporting, developing examples for enhancing communication at the MJOs would be a value added role for this group

Curriculum
- Need to get people who have interest in the subject matter, and people with needs for the subject matter
- There is a good baseline of courses by functional area and APTI-Learn additional areas; started on creating a listing of courses that are outside of APTI-Learn that are being created by the MJOs; using pivot tables for grouping courses, where is there overlap by multiple function areas; what do we have and where do we want to go; what will be the future for training;
- Michael Vince will be a co-lead of the curriculum WG
- How does this WG mesh with the previous WG2? WG2 worked on leveraging state/locals for updating course updates; working on finding SLT staff on curriculum reviews, have had 3-4 organizational calls to create this process
- CEM workgroup is a good model for how the process of updating courses will work

Delivery
- Knowledge transfer, how do we best transfer information to create knowledge; includes not only methods, but also what's going to be needed in the future?
- Reviewed scope and identified tasks that would take less effort (by carrying forward work that's already been done) vs those tasks that would be more labor intensive; we identified task 5 as being the biggest challenge, need expertise to help us figure out what the possibilities are for delivering training (e.g., blended learning)
- Need to recruit learning experts
- Survey what's currently out there for online courses
- Develop the ask for recruiting at the MJOs, and states

LMS
- Looking at schedule for LMS update, current contract expires May 2021
- need to gather criteria by this summer, have these criteria finalized by next fall
- procurement process with gov't needs to be considered, including what the options are for LMS
- Schedule to get feedback from workgroup by July
- EPA has contracting funds to create a fundamentals of LMS primer; this primer can be delivered to a wider audience
- Will need to interface with other WGs on criteria for the LMS

February 7 2019

Action Items

Zac: Schedule a standing monthly meeting for the Steering Committee
John: prepare a presentation for the JTC meeting on the new structure, reorganization, and recruitment of WG leads/members
Phil: answer nomination for the Curriculum WG co-lead
Adam: designate an EPA co-lead for the steering committee
Adam: designate EPA advisors/co-leads on Communications, Delivery, and LMS WGs

Attendees

Zac, Adam, Kara, MaryAnn, John, Doug, Phil, Brian, Jeff

Agenda

Review previous call notes and action items
Decide on steering committee co-leads
Review revised JTC straw proposal and new JTC structure; discuss leadership on different workgroups/teams
2019 JTC workplan and role of the steering committee
- Develop brief charges for each of the JTC workgroups (see John’s straw proposal)
What is the message about the steering committee/JTC reorganization that we will present on the JTC call next week?

Call Notes

Previous Call Action Items

John: update Straw Proposal, send to Zac for review; circulate to this group; status: done, see attached
Zac: develop a conceptual model of the new JTC structure; status: covered by John’s straw proposal table
MaryAnn: check about EPA involvements in steering committee leadership, and EPA involvement in the steering committee calls; status: done
Zac: try to schedule a meeting before the JTC call next week; status: done

Decide on steering committee co-leads

EPA will get back to us on who can co-lead, either Adam or MaryAnn
John to co-lead on the MJO side; endorsed by the group
Zac to help with logistics

Review revised JTC straw proposal

John: should try to streamline workgroup names to help with communications; does course library maint move to needs assessment?; question about having contractors involved in the course development workgroup, may be a conflict of interest to have them involved in planning

 Proposal for Workgroup Rename
 * Steering Committee 
 * Communications & Needs Assessment Workgroup = Communications WG
 ** Coordination Team
 ** Subject Matter (e.g., Modeling) Teams
 * Course Library, Updates, & Development Workgroup = Curriculum WG
 * Training Delivery Work Group = Delivery WG
 * Learning Management System Work Group = LMS WG

Adam: issue with contractors being involved in driving work that they would be contracted to do, but could help by reporting to WG; workgroups are a way for succession planning, can workgroups help to develop people into new roles?; training delivery: delivery of training (online, distance learning, etc) may be moved into the LMS group, look at the LMS in terms of what do we need it to do, including delivery
John: can share responsibilities between workgroups; need to have a vision for the LMS before selecting the system; hope there will be interface with EPA along the way in the LMS visioning/procurement/development process; can we circumvent any restrictions (contractual?) that happened during the last LMS development cycle; there will need to be interface between the delivery and LMS WGs
Adam: looking into LMS contractual issues that came up last time, trying to avoid issues in the past; need to exercise every option so that the MJOs/states can provide input to EPA before the RFP is written
Phil: there are active workgroups in the JTC now, e.g., WG2 is working on using the NACAA and AAPCA committees to do course updates, how do we respect the ongoing work of those WGs?
Kara: WG 3 lead, wrapping up and see a lot of overlap with communications and needs assessment
Zac: Need to reorganize the current WGs into the new structure, continue to support ongoing work and decommission groups who's work is complete
Reorganize JTC:
- WG2 (course updates) --> Curriculum WG
- WG3 (instructors) --> Communications WG
- WG4 (LMS) --> LMS WG
- WG5 (courses) --> Communications WG
- WG6(inventory of courses) --> Curriculum WG
- WG7 (prioritization) --> Curriculum WG
Need to add description of scope for the steering committee on the straw proposal, e.g., discuss/monitor training resources with EPA and facilitate discussions between WGs

WG/team leadership

Proposal to have EPA co-lead + state/MJO co-lead on each WG
EPA can't commit the staff to co-lead all of the WGs; don't have the people
Can EPA be included as an advisor, if they don't have leadership role? Find a co-lead who is a good leader, and a second co-lead who is more of a subject matter expert/practitioner
Need to get EPA's participation, when possible, at full depth engaging and leading/active in the WGs; EPA team is building now and will need time to develop the staff to be involved
NESCAUM and WESTAR endorse the new structure
Is there an issue with AAPCA/NACAA being involved as co-leads in the WGs? It's a resources issue, extend the net as widely as possible, there is no issue here

 WG Leadership Proposal
 * Curriculum WG: Kristen Rhea (EPA) and Phil Assmus (NACAA) nominated, but he needs to think about it
 * Communications WG: Kara Murphy (NESCAUM) and ??? 
 * Training Delivery WG: Zac Adelman(LADCO) and ???
 * LMS WG: Julie (MARAMA) and Kevin Vaughn (VA), need to confirm

JTC call message

John to develop some bullets and send to steering committee for review
Bottom line is to convey the objectives and structure, WG interfaces, needs for leaders and recruitment of members, talk about stimulating interest

Final thoughts

Need further conversations on EPA resources, follow up on the meeting in November; organize this through the steering committee;
EPA will put forward names for advisory roles, possible future co-leads

February 5 2019

Action Items

John: update Straw Proposal, send to Zac for review; circulate to this group
Zac: develop a conceptual model of the new JTC structure
MaryAnn: check about EPA involvements in steering committee leadership, and EPA involvement in the steering committee calls
Zac: try to schedule a meeting before the JTC call next week

Attendees

Zac, Adam, Kara, MaryAnn, John, Michael, Phil, Brian, Jeff, Julie

Agenda

Steering Committee charge/scope and structure
Communication principles
Membership: MJOs + National Orgs + EPA, do we need a state? Or trainer rep?
2019 JTC workplan and role of the steering committee
- Develop a workplan template and scope for the training material subject matter teams
- Develop a workplan (process/timeline) for LMS upgrade
- Engage with EPA on resources, funding, in-kind contributions, allocation
- Coordinate on next regional surveys for setting training priorities

Call Notes

Steering Committee charge/scope and structure

JTC was formed to create a structure for collecting information on training that was national in scope, gathering information on national training needs, including courses, instructors, logistics, and making decisions on how to prioritize work to grow/improve the program
Hourglass model envisions the JTC as the top of the hourglass, the collection point in the process, and funneling that a steering committee that works to organize the inputs, and set priorities; the steering committee then distributes these needs into actions/workgroups that draw from a broader community of expertise to accomplish the goals of improving the training program; the work of these groups are funneled back through the steering committee for review/evaluation, and back to the JTC for distribution to the SLT community through the national training program
Steering committee would sort through this information, and prioritize; develop a coherent national training strategy, convene workgroups, and provide guidance/support to accomplish the goals of the strategy
Create structure under the steering committee that work on actions and activities, possibly organized by functional areas, push out work products, include JTC and potentially other active/ancillary participants in these workgroups
MaryAnn: in working with WG2, a chart was developed to visually represent this process (19 July 2017 Training Strategy straw proposal); John to resend to group for review, actual workgroups TBD, will change from the original proposal based on the current needs/direction of the community

Communication principles

This wiki can be used for notes and distributing information/materials across the JTC
Need to develop this area further: what are the rules of engagement?

Membership: MJOs + National Orgs + EPA

Do we need state reps on the steering committee? Yes, to ground truth the activities of the steering committee, it would be good to include the agencies that we serve
AAPCA and NACAA membership could serve a dual purpose, both as national and state reps
Request that the AAPCA and NACAA training co-chairs participate as state reps; can we get all four involved? need to respect their time availability
Are there other strong active state/local counterparts who we would consider?
- Julie: helps to have a smaller group in a steering committee
- John: steering committee members may need to be assigned to track what's going on in the course update workgroup, rather than have co-leads of the different workgroups on the steering committee
- Zac: could have a structure where the workgroup co-leads get assigned to the steering committee; may create a larger number of people than we want in the steering committee
- John: course update group needs a couple of strong leaders to organize a larger number of workgroups and heavy work load; trying to limit duplication of effort and focus the coordination activities
- Julie: let's figure out what the subgroups are going to be, and then come back to determine representation
- John: don't have a revised strategic plan, need to conceptually go through the plan to help solve the organizational structure; at some point we need to develop a revised strategy that we work from
- Who else gets involved? National EPA, regional offices, contractors? Will be determined the membership by scope and scale of the workgroup efforts; only other EPA office involved in JTC is OECA, their targeted audience is EPA folks, may not need to be on the steering committee

JTC Structure

See John's updated National Air Quality Training Program straw proposal

 Proposed new JTC committees/workgroups
 * Steering Committee
 * Communications & Needs Assessment WG
 * Instructional Services WG
 * Learning Management System (LMS) WG
 * Course Library, Updates, Development (Library) WG
   - Library Coordination WG
   - Subject Matter Teams: Intro to Air Pollution, Pollution Control, Ambient Monitoring, Emissions, Modeling, Planning, Permitting, Inspection/Enforcement, HAPs, Stationary Sources, Source Sampling/Monitoring, Mobile Sources, Climate Change

Course Library, Updates, & Development WG
- Do we need a single organizing group for course updates with sub groups working on topic areas; need a coordination effort above the topic area groups (see proposed structure above)
- Coordination level in this WG will organize the subject matter teams; need to isolate the JTC steering committee from being too involved in the minutiae of the course updates
- Coordination layer produces more structure, but it could help with organizing the broad work under 10+ subject matter areas; can we expect that people are going to be able to commit to the level of work needed to get this work done?
- Concerns about the large scope of this WG, need to be careful about the organization, commitment, and oversight
- As JTC is not staffed by subject matter experts, looking to this structure to engage/involve experts in reviewing and updating training materials
- Will subject matter team co-leads really be interested in participating in discussions with other teams? Coordination committee will need to have a charge to constrain the conversations, to the extent possible, to general issues that apply across WGs
- Coordination committee would probably be a more appropriate place for contractors and states; need to identify the charge of the coordination WG
- Library WG will focus on identifying priorities and mechanics of course updates, not deployment
LMS WG
- Engage with EPA on plans for LMS updates
Communications and Needs Assessment WG
- Organize periodic needs assessment through the states/MJOs
Instructional Services WG
- Focus on e-learning, distance learning, deployment of materials
- Rename to Training Delivery?

General Topics/Next Steps

Organize another call before the JTC meeting next Tuesday; focus of the call will be to look at the proposed structure of the new JTC WGs and figure out how many people are needed to coordinate, think about co-leads, and set a series of charges for the co-leads to begin forming these WGs
Who will lead the Steering Committee? Does it need to include an MJO and EPA person, or could it be just MJOs? MaryAnn will check with Adam and report back
How important is it to work around Adam's schedule? Can we have meetings if he is not available? Who else is critical to have on the calls?

Steering Committee

Contents

Overview and Charge

Members

Conference Calls

August 5, 2020

July 1, 2020

May 26, 2020

April 28, 2020

April 7, 2020

March 24, 2020

February 25, 2020

January 28, 2020

January 15, 2020

December 17, 2019

November 26, 2019

October 22, 2019

September 12, 2019

March 22, 2019

February 7 2019

February 5 2019

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