Cultural resource specialists at the National Park Service work everywhere from big cities to remote parks. The Common Learning Portal gives all of them one place to learn and share.
The National Park Service workforce of about 22,000 permanent and seasonal employees is spread across more than 400 parks, historic sites and monuments. Before the portal, learning resources were scattered across more than twenty separate websites that were not connected.
The Brief: A Private Learning Intranet for NPS Staff
The service's Career Academy for Cultural Resources wanted a private intranet where staff and partners could find courses, documents, contacts and each other in real time, on any device, while meeting strict federal accessibility rules.
What We Built: WordPress, BuddyPress and Elasticsearch
- In person taxonomy and data mapping workshops for 40+ people at the Mather Training Center in Washington, D.C., named for Stephen T. Mather.
- A custom design refined through sketches, wireframes and several review rounds.
- A Learning Center for online, in person and partner training, with links into DOILearn.
- Program Areas powered by Elasticsearch so each discipline can drill straight to its material.
- A Clearinghouse library of reviewed books, video, handbooks and podcasts, plus Help and Careers centers.
- The Commons: a BuddyPress community with rich profiles, groups, connections, activity streams and private messages.
Finding the Right Material From Any Park
Wherever employees are, they can sign in to the Common Learning Portal and find events, articles, contacts at other parks, policy documents and more. The Learning Center lists online and face to face courses plus trainings offered by NPS partners. Program Areas let employees browse Clearinghouse resources, trainings and Commons content for their discipline, and Elasticsearch lets them drill down quickly.
The Careers Center explains what cultural resource employees do and lets staff search for internship opportunities. Libraries are organized by topics and competencies, with direct links to online courses in DOILearn.
A 12 Month Build With NPS and Enterprise Knowledge
The project started with data visualization and taxonomy work that set how information is arranged and displayed. Kickoff and taxonomy workshops at the Stephen T. Mather Training Center brought together more than 40 people from the National Park Service and Enterprise Knowledge, and the design went through several phases of sketches and wireframes into a fully responsive site.
After launch, NPS staff presented the network of Content Teams behind the portal, each with its own publishing authority in WordPress, at WordCamp DC 2017.
Why It Mattered: Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 Access
A 12 month build that conforms to both Section 508 and WCAG 2.0, giving every employee equal access to the knowledge of the whole service.
Technology Stack
- WordPress
- BuddyPress
- Elasticsearch
- Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 conformance
Project leadership by Brian Messenlehner, AlphaWeb founder.
Related: site audits and accessibility reviews, Section 508 and WCAG on WordPress for government, BuddyPress community sites, WordPress for government and military.
