National Air Pollution Training Program
Contents
Overview
The National Air Pollution Training Program Collaborative was formed to review and develop training materials for the National Air Pollution Training Program (the Training Program). One component of this Training Program is to support the training of federal, state, local, and tribal (SLT) air agency staff by maintaining a library of course materials on different subjects related to air pollution management. A collaborative effort between federal, regional, and state air program staff is needed to continually review the course materials and to evaluate whether the materials are meeting the training needs of the SLT air programs.
Scope
The scope of this Collaborative is to review all Training Program course materials on a regular schedule and facilitate updates to the materials, as needed. In addition to reviewing the materials for updates, there are many courses in the Training Program curriculum that are underutilized. The Collaborative will review the courses in the curriculum and recommend removing and/or consolidating courses in order to streamline the task of managing the course materials. Finally, the Collaborative will identify courses materials that may be missing from the curriculum and develop recommendations for creating entirely new courses.
Subject Matter Teams
The task of reviewing the hundreds of courses currently in the Training Program will be managed by organizing the Collaborative around subject matter teams. Each team will be charged with reviewing and maintaining the materials for different subject matter areas. Team membership will include two co-leads. One co-lead will be from EPA, the other will be from a state agency or an MJO. The co-leads must have experience with the subject matter area and be well-connected in the national community for that area. The co-leads are responsible for prioritizing issues related to the review and maintenance of the training materials, recruiting team members, leading team member interactions, and ensuring that outputs/results from the team are communicated to the coordinating committee.
The co-leads will recruit additional team members, as needed, to support the course material review. Team members are responsible for contributing to the effort of reviewing the course materials and prioritizing improvements to the materials.
The subject matter teams will work independently and in parallel on reviewing the course materials in their subject area in pursuit of creating recommendations and priorities for how to improve the materials within their domain. A coordination committee will provide logistical support and facilitation to the subject matter teams as they move toward the goal of fully updated course materials to support the training needs of SLT air agencies.
This wiki will be used to document the progress of the work within each team.
Tasks
The subject matter teams will be responsible for accomplishing the following tasks
- Categorize all available training materials in APTI and NACT (and elsewhere, if applicable) into their subject matter area. This task may involve working with other subject matter teams to determine in which area a set of course materials is best categorized.
- Determine when each set of course materials was last updated and where those updated materials are stored (e.g., are they on APTI-Learn or with a contractor)
- Determine the level of demand for a set of course materials. When were they last used? How many trainings/year use the materials? Are there planned courses that will use the materials?
- Determine where there is redundancy across course materials and develop a plan for consolidating courses
- Identify courses that are no longer in demand, and create a plan for decommissioning the materials for the course
- Identify training needs in the subject matter area that are not being met with the current course materials. Create a list of new courses that will need to be created to meet these unmet training needs
- Estimate the amount of effort (FTEs) that will be needed from outside of the team, either as contractor support or in-kind support from the EPA/MJOs, to update/develop new course materials in order to meet the training needs of the SLTs in the subject matter area
- Hold monthly calls with the team to work through the above tasks
- Document progress on this wiki and report progress to the coordination committee
Coordination Committee
The coordination committee will provide governance and logistical support to the Collaborative subject matter teams. The coordination committee will be composed of two co-leads (EPA + MJO/state), each of the co-leads from the subject matter teams, and the MJO executive directors.
Tasks
The subject matter teams will be responsible for accomplishing the following tasks
Subject Matter Team Wikis
The course materials are divided into the following subject matter areas, with several courses included in each area. Click on the links below to visit the wikis of each subject matter team.
