Veterinary Food Inspection Course

The Client

Army Medical Department (AMEDD)

The Challenge
The Army Medical Department (AMEDD) Center and School trains thousands of soldiers in critical career fields each year. The 80 hours of courseware needed to cover introductory topics, inspection-related duties, basic skills, food science, inspection of operational rations, field laboratory testing, safety, and security issues, among others. The course would be a precursor to enabling the student to complete formal, in-residence training as a 91R Veterinary Food Inspection Specialist and is mission-critical training.

The biggest course challenge was related to the audience. The students are young (early 20s), computer game savvy, with little formal schooling above the high school level.

The Solution
In only seven months, Karta developed over 60 food inspection lessons of custom web-based training (WBT) for AMEDD. Karta focused on creating training that was fun as well as informative. Opening scenarios were developed for each lesson along with development of expert characters with unique personalities to provide lesson background and feedback to the student throughout the course - all to keep the student motivated and engaged with the training. The course maximizes the use of motion, graphics, and interactive activities to help reinforce all learning objectives and hold the student's attention, while keeping the material from being overwhelming.

The Results
The Army customer has praised Karta's efforts calling the lessons "exceptional" and "imaginative" with "outstanding activities." Karta's in-house SMEs work any content issues directly with AMEDD SMEs to receive answers to content questions and to accelerate any issue resolution. As a result, the customer's needs were fully met with interactive, engaging courseware that met their training needs, that worked on their LMS, and were delivered on time and on budget.

Korean/Japanese Hazardous Waste Management

The Client
Air Force Institute for Operational Health (AFIOH)

The Challenge
Karta was tasked to develop a training aid for incoming Air Force Hazardous Waste Accumulation Point (HWAP) Managers that provided the basic understanding of the critical tasks associated with environmental management on overseas military bases. The course integrated the training material with the background information, regulatory data, and the forms required for mandatory record keeping. It also provided a method to manage the data associated with each learner's successful completion of the training program.

The Solution
With the ever increasing operational tempo of the U.S. military, the new HWAP Managers do not always have the benefit of learning the job from their predecessor. To take the place of this "face-to-face" training, the course uses a character, an outgoing HWAP Manager, who provides students detailed training on key policies and procedures they needed to begin effectively accomplishing their mission on Day One.

This course was initially utilized for HWAP Managers' training in Korea, but was leveraged to also train HWAP Manages in Japan. Location-specific content was modified while core content remained consistent, significantly cutting development costs.

The Results
Karta was able to develop an efficient and standardized process, which helped to reduce cost and schedule. Karta worked with standards compliance organizations to ensure that the courseware met AFIOH needs well into the future. Karta also worked with Advanced Distributed Learning, The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), and other consortiums to ensure that the Hazardous Waste course was compliant with industry technical standards.

The project was successfully completed on time and on budget.