Challenge 

Expanding community impact 

Founded mid-1970s, Sourcewell is a self-funded government organization in Minnesota with a mission to enrich lives and empower community success in its five-county region. As a force multiplier, Sourcewell amplifies the impact of public agencies through a government-to-government hub of solutions. By offering a growing portfolio of government-specific solutions, in-house service, and partnerships with top solution providers, Sourcewell help regional and national public agencies enhance their capability and capacity to better meet the evolving needs of their community.  

To grow a viable funding source and increase its impact, Sourcewell serves 50,000 public agencies through cooperative purchasing, providing over 400 competitively solicited contracts and supports 42 other states with nationally recognized contracts. 

Sourcewell not only helps government bodies, tribal entities, education institutions and nonprofits benefit from economies of scale when purchasing key resources, software and equipment, but cooperative purchasing dollars are funnelled right back to growing services, resources and support for public agencies to build healthier communities. 

“Sourcewell is a mission-first organization and does everything to help public agencies to meet their goals and successfully serve their constituents,” comments Holly Doyle, e-learning program administrator at Sourcewell. 

Keen to expand its long record of investing in regional services, Sourcewell created options for online professional development and training opportunities.  

“Many of the professionals who wanted to attend training have busy lives and job commitments, and they struggled to make it to in-person sessions,” says Doyle. “This was especially true for individuals interested in becoming a licensed childcare provider. They are required to attend orientation as part of the application process. Being required to attend that orientation on-site made it difficult for some who had other responsibilities or commitments.” 

Sourcewell’s vision went far beyond moving in-person sessions online; the organization was committed to delivering consistent, accessible, and effective training that would leave a lasting positive impact on public sector professionals.  

Doyle adds: “Sourcewell has great relationships with the people it supports, and transitioning to online training should not diminish these connections. Our goal with online training is to encourage continuous improvement, empower those we serve to achieve their goals, and ultimately strengthen relationships for greater impact in the communities they serve.” 

Solution 

Upholding excellence with a modernized learning platform 

While Sourcewell had a capable LMS, they sought a more innovative platform with advanced features, purposeful development and dedicated support to further their mission of providing diverse and equitable access to relevant professional development.  

“As a government body, we have a very rigorous purchasing and procurement process. Our vendors and participating entities are always confident that we are offering the best-in-class to our members, clients, and partners,” says Doyle.  

To enhance the learning experience, Sourcewell implemented Brightspace as the central LMS solution underpinning its online training, along with D2L Course Merchant for e-commerce, D2L Creator+ for flexible course authoring and Bongo for video conferencing. 

I love Brightspace, and I have been using it throughout my career. I am constantly telling people about D2L. One of the reasons they are so good is because they bring a variety of third-party apps from industry partners into their solution, so you always get the best features.

Holly Doyle, e-learning program administrator, Sourcewell

Developing accessible and engaging content every time  

With a lean team building courses, Sourcewell wanted a robust content authoring tool that maximizes design flexibility to personalize on-brand content for various entities with ease.  

“We needed the freedom to customize course design—everything from color schemes to homepage layouts—to meet the specific needs of our audience and their varying levels of technological experience, all while fostering accountability by ensuring consistency and access,” comments Doyle.

“Creator+ with Brightspace HTML editor is huge when you’re building for ease of use, simplicity and presenting information in an engaging and effective way. With Creator+, content takes up less page real estate, and the courses look absolutely fantastic and professional.” 

Despite having other authoring tools at its disposal, Sourcewell was adamant on being an early adopter of Creator+, empowering those without the coding expertise to create engaging course content. 

“Building content out from the Creator+ templates really sped up the course design process,” adds Doyle. “It’s just a great tool that my colleagues and I are using without needing external training or external authoring tools. We just click on the template and start creating right away, because I already have the centralized content styles set up. I like how it makes integrating interactive elements and bringing different resources together easy and intuitive. And the feedback we’ve gotten from learners is that it’s engaging, which is huge when statutes and regulations can be dry.” 

As a government entity, Sourcewell is highly diligent in ensuring accessibility compliance. “The Brightspace HTML editor has an accessibility checker, which is hugely beneficial when reviewing courses. Most of the content we create is accessible by design and reviewed for accessibility, but having a tool that automatically validates pages and courses for accessibility is a real time-saver.” 

The e-learning team at Sourcewell also use intelligent agents to set reminders for different points during the learning journey. “We’ve used intelligent agents ever since they became available,” says Doyle. “We find them really useful for scheduling communication with learners at key points, whether that’s nudging them to complete a module or congratulating them after they have completed a course. Being able to partially automate this process makes our lives a lot easier and helps us to stay engaged with all of our learners.” 

Building confidence with effective training and support 

From implementation to training, the onboarding process has provided a solid foundation to build effective e-learning courses. 

“When developing online courses, it’s not just about putting a video recording or a PowerPoint online. Having D2L Learning Services thoroughly review a course we created and validate our practices in effective course design has been a real confidence builder for us,” says Doyle. 

D2L has also provided the e-learning team with comprehensive training and support resources. “I am probably one of the most critical people out there when it comes to online training, but I can honestly say that the training we have received has been amazing,” says Doyle. “And the resources and the support from the D2L community are also incredibly useful. I can search for a topic and find a step-by-step guide for what I want to do. When I need additional guidance, the responsiveness of the support teams is outstanding, so I never have to worry.” 

Result 

Empowering public workers in Minnesota with new skills  

To date, Sourcewell has developed 16 specialized training courses designed to support its enterprise and regional education and community initiatives, including: 

• Spring Math Onboarding for K-12 Teachers: Sourcewell equips teachers with the skills to effectively integrate Spring Math into their learning curriculum, enhancing students’ math abilities. 

• License Renewal courses for K-12 Educators: Sourcewell provides professional development for educators in the state mandated training categories so they can earn CEUs to meeting the license renewal standards. 

• Intro to Education College Credit Course for High School Students: Through a collaboration with a local university, Sourcewell offers college-credit courses to high school students. 

• Parliamentary Procedure Course for Government Workers: To support new government employees, Sourcewell has introduced the region’s first parliamentary procedure course, tailored to public sector professionals. 

• Community Service and Licensing Programs for Adult Learners: Sourcewell has launched its first e-learning initiatives for community service, including childcare and adult foster care licensing programs. 

Since launching these initiatives, Sourcewell has seen a 96% boost in course registrations.

Previously, we had around 350 course enrollments in a year. This year we have already received 680 registrations, and we are not even through the full year. Moreover, in the year prior to this initiative, we issued 187 certificates of completion; this year we’ve already issued 752—that’s an over 300% increase. This goes to show that moving our courses online is helping more educators and public workers to boost their skills so they can serve their communities in new ways.

Holly Doyle, e-learning program administrator, Sourcewell

With the flexibility of e-learning, teachers are increasingly investing in professional development. “What’s really telling is that teachers have completed 1,030 continuing education hours this year, a threefold increase from the 321 hours recorded last year,” reports Doyle. 

Meeting critical childcare needs  

Sourcewell’s Community Licensing programs have significantly cut down the time prospects take to complete the application process to become a licensed provider. 

“In just two years we have had 179 people complete our childcare course, which is almost double the number who completed the in-person training. The new self-paced online orientation significantly speeds up the process, allowing for immediate submission of the applicant packets which is typically within 12 hours of inquiry. And they are now completing the process and becoming a licensed provider in 30-90 days, whereas before it took between 4-6 months. Parents and guardians are crying out for childcare across Minnesota, so the faster we can train new childcare providers, the sooner we can help them meet that need in the community.” 

This success set the stage for Sourcewell to quickly launch an adult foster care orientation training last November, and that was followed by a demand for a Community Residential Settings orientation program. 

Strengthening relationships and operational efficiency 

By moving training online, providing consistency in course content and improving operational efficiency for course administrators, the team experienced a clear reduction of inquiries and are better equipped to focus on their priorities. 

“Our colleagues involved in childcare licensing programs have expressed how much time and energy they’ve saved since implementing the program,” explains Doyle. “They appreciate having more time to better support those we serve.” 

The same was true for onboarding teachers on Spring Math this September. 

“Previously, onboarding all K-12 schools using Spring Math would take in the upwards of 90 days in a row, 8-hours a day doing individual trainings, “explains Doyle. “Now, new subscribers self-enroll in the onboarding program, complete with resources and opportunity to network with other schools. This shift allows our team to focus on enhancing the program and provide greater value to educators.” 

Enhancing learning engagement and satisfaction 

Crucially, Sourcewell has received praise from both learners and licensing departments. “Many of our learners—teachers, for example—have to renew their licenses and have seen both the in-person version and the online version of our programs. We are very pleased with the feedback we have received; people are coming out of the courses and saying, ‘Wow, I really enjoyed that.’ Even when the source material of government rules and regulations can sometimes be pretty dry, our learners come away feeling engaged and really getting something out of our courses.”  

The positive feedback extends to Sourcewell’s broader operations as well. “We’re receiving more requests to develop training to support other audiences we have not yet created content for. To meet this growing demand, we are intentionally developing an eLearning strategic roadmap that aligns to our mission of making a real difference in our communities.