Case Study: Innovative Learning Department Onboarding Course

Broward County Public Schools, 2023

The Challenge

The beginning of the 2023 school year presented the Innovative Learning department with an immediate onboarding challenge. Three new hires joined a small team of approximately 25 people simultaneously, a significant influx requiring rapid onboarding. At the same time, the department's longtime Project Manager retired, taking years of institutional knowledge with her. With the school year beginning immediately, new staff needed to get up to speed quickly, but there was no centralized resource to help them do it.

The Approach

As the Instructional Technology team leader, I recognized that different people in the department were repeating the same information individually to each new hire, an unsustainable process that was inconsistent and time-consuming for everyone involved. Rather than wait to be asked, I proposed building a centralized digital onboarding course in Canvas LMS that could deliver consistent information to all new hires simultaneously while also serving as an ongoing reference for the entire department.

Within approximately one week I built the course shell and outline, then brought in colleagues to review it for accuracy and consistency before launch.

The Solution

The resulting course became a comprehensive departmental knowledge base covering:

• A "who's who" directory introducing department staff and structure

• Policies and procedures essential for new Innovative Learning staff

• Practical guidance on calendars, scheduling, and mail policies

• A dedicated section for each digital application used by the team

• A curated library of department webinars bookmarked for ongoing reference

The course was deliberately designed for multiple user types. All department staff were enrolled so veterans could use it as a reference. Supervisors were granted editing rights to ensure the course stayed current and remained department-owned beyond my direct involvement, removing any single point of failure.

The Outcome

New hires responded positively immediately, appreciating having a self-paced resource to work through during the slower early days of the school year when hands-on work was limited. The course solved the immediate crisis but also created something lasting, a living repository that continues to onboard new department hires to this day.

The initiative did not go unnoticed. My director later shared that my independently identifying this problem and bringing her a fully realized solution was a defining moment in how she viewed my abilities. 

Shortly after, I interviewed for and was promoted to Project Manager, Technology and Instruction.

You can see some of the images from this course in the IL Onboarding Canvas Course page.