NCELA
Agency: U.S. Department of Education
Office: National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA)
A User-Based Knowledge Management System (KMS) for the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA)
Synergy's Approach
The U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) administers the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA) to collect, coordinate, and convey a broad range of research and resources in support of an inclusive approach to high quality education for English Learners (ELs). To fulfill its mission, NCELA supports high quality networking among state-level administrators of programs authorized under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of December, 2015.
ED selected Synergy to design and develop a user-based Knowledge Management System (KMS) for NCELA for use by OLEA staff and NCELA grantees. The KMS will include provisions for at least one OELA “super-user” who will have administrative access, while others will have standard access i.e. will only be able to edit their grant-related information and only view other Project Officer’s grantee information. Synergy’s KMS includes:
- A Fillable form that grantees populate with basic information;
- A searchable database that contains questions and user’s answers; and
- A Resource tab that includes hyperlinks to OELA studies and articles that are housed in the NCELA resource library.
The KMS will be modular in design, meaning that it can be expanded and built upon as necessary (in phases). Synergy’s information technology team will support OELA by designing and implementing a compliance-monitoring module to ensure usage and report analytics at any time. Grantees will have access to information regarding webinars, forms, Questions & Answers, as well as other compliance monitoring related materials
Synergy also maintains and enhances the NCELA website:
- Ensuring that the NCELA website is user-friendly and easily navigable with an effective architecture that allows users to locate information with minimal clicks;
- Supporting the inclusion of appropriate, varied content by developing and installing back-end databases software and platforms to launch the website;
- Testing the website functions on a continuous basis and conducting user testing;
- Enhancing the website, in collaboration with the project team, on a continuous basis; and
- Maintaining a website capable of supporting all social media that is viewable and useable on all types of electronic devices.
Solution
Synergy is designing and developing a user-based Knowledge Management System (KMS) for the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA) to house pertinent information for use by Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) staff and NCELA grantees. The KMS is a hybrid grants management system that supports intra-office workflow and grantee application and information needs. It will include a fillable form, a searchable database, and a resource tab.