Navy Knowledge Online

LEADERS FROM THE NAVAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING COMMAND ARE PUSHING THE NAVY’S SINGLE WEB PORTAL FOR TRAINING, EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL GROWTH TO ITS LIMITS, THANKS IN PART TO DEDICATED INDUSTRY PARTNERS AND A HOST OF NEW USERS.

Today’s global Navy offers the sailor tremendous opportunities and many challenges. One of the toughest challenges for the Navy is maintaining equitable access opportunities for all sailors with respect to training, education and personal and professional growth. It’s difficult to provide the same opportunities to sailors stationed “boots-on-the-ground” in Iraq or in the middle of the Indian Ocean that they would enjoy if stationed ashore in Norfolk, Va. Navy Knowledge Online (NKO), managed by the Naval Education and Training Command (NETC) in Pensacola, Fla., is the tool the Navy is developing to equalize education, training and professional development opportunities throughout the entire workforce.

According to the NKO program manager, the Web portal is part of the training, education and career-management system that supports the growth and development of Navy personnel, which enables the Navy’s joint warfighting ability. “The Navy is integrating manpower, personnel, training and education (MPT&E) into a single enterprise to create a more agile and responsive organization,” said Peg David, NKO program manager for NETC. “Our goal is to create a Navy in which all sailors—active, reserve, afloat, ashore and civilian—are optimally recruited, trained and assigned so they contribute their fullest to mission accomplishment.

“The Navy is working aggressively to implement programs that allow sailors to take more responsibility in developing their own learning goals, both professionally and personally. NKO, in conjunction with other tools, such as the 5 Vector Model (5VM) and Career Management System (CMS), will aid sailors in the management of their careers as well as the Navy in the management of our most important asset—people.”

HISTORY

Launched in September 2002, NKO (https://www.nko.navy.mil) is the Navy’s knowledge portal, enabling Navy education, training and professional growth management for personnel throughout the fleet. Sailors can link to vital career information, education and training resources, college programs, technical systems resources, communities of practice and knowledge centers, academic and technical libraries and other professional and personal development resources.

“A dynamic, broad-based delivery system, NKO is designed to be accessible by all sailors [active, Reserve and retired], Department of Navy civilians and family members,” David explained. “Whether on the job, on the road or at home, NKO connects users with the information, expertise and learning opportunities required to support both professional and personal development. For sailors at sea, an afloat version of NKO is under development to deliver equitable access to information on the Web portal.”

AFLOAT

The Navy plans to outfit every ship with a server containing much of the information and most of the tools a sailor would find if he or she logged on to NKO on a computer at home.

According to David, the issue of limited bandwidth at sea will be addressed by distance support servers and replication-compression technology. “Ships and submarines will receive a Navy Sea Systems (NAVSEA) distance support server which will contain education, training and other personal and professional development, and career management programs,” David said. “A sailor at sea will interact primarily with the local onboard server and only when the ship or submarine establishes connectivity with a satellite or from the pier will updates be transmitted and/or received. For example, the local server will host most Navy e-Learning courses. From the sailor’s perspective, he or she will interact with the onboard learning system in real time. After a course is completed, that data will be transmitted off the ship where the sailor’s electronic training jacket (ETJ) and 5VM will be updated.”

The first dedicated NKO Afloat capability was delivered in July 2005. This initial at-sea capability is a scaled-down version of the total capability and contains selected NKO-accessed content and courses most used by shipboard-specific communities. Because all of the NKO content that would normally take up the ship’s bandwidth is stored locally, it leaves the text-based information as the only data that actually needs to be transferred from the ship.

IMPROVEMENTS

NKO underwent a major redesign and improvement effort in June 2005. David spearheaded the NKO team’s redesign efforts. “The goal of the NKO redesign was to improve overall usability of the site by making content easier for users to find,” David said. “As a result, users are experiencing a more intuitive display with detailed login and help instructions, an improved user-friendly navigation model and labeling of content. The new layout focuses on delivering tailored content relevant to the individual based upon the user’s status: active duty, Reserve, civilian, job specialty, warfare community, etc.” Changes included a new global navigation structure that supports all users, improved site nomenclature, content and layout improvements for information and community-specific user home pages.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES

NKO links to an online environment that allows sailors to manage their own careers, obtain information for personal and professional development, share information in a collaborative environment, solve professional problems, participate in mentorship programs and communicate with peers around the fleet. Assets available through NKO include:

ACCESS TO CMS

Previously know as JASS, and then JCMS, the Career Management System (CMS) is the Navy’s Interactive Detailing system. CMS is designed to enable sailors and commands to identify the best job for the sailor and best sailor for the command.

CMS is designed to enable enlisted sailors to research possible future jobs, and commands to review and comment on sailor applications.

Ultimately, CMS, in conjunction with the 5VM, will empower sailors with the ability to compete for jobs and career opportunities. Today, job matches are based on job specialty, rank and specialty certifications. In the future, jobs will be based on skills, certifications and qualifications as documented on the 5VM.

Even though it is still under development, CMS is a tool sailors and commands can use now. CMS is key to the Sea Warrior goal to place the right sailor, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time.

ACCESS TO THE 5 VECTOR MODEL

The 5VM is the tool that will allow sailors to take charge of their own careers and will assist commands with meeting the Navy’s mission. When fully developed, the 5VM will be able to identify the knowledge, skills, abilities, tasks and resources sailors need to be successful, and it will identify individual sailors who have the knowledge, skills and abilities a command needs in order to meet the Navy’s mission.

The 5VM eventually will drive training, education and proficiency requirements for all Navy personnel. It will indicate what training is required and how that training will be delivered, what qualifications are required and how to obtain them, and what opportunities exist to excel at any given task. It will be the “interactive résumé” that sailors and others may view to determine their ability to perform specific work.

The five vectors represent the five developmental areas of a sailor’s career: professional, personal, leadership, certifications and qualifications and performance.

LIFELONG LEARNING

As the Navy increases its emphasis on lifelong learning and the use of the Internet for training and education, sailors are being empowered with tools to better track and manage their progress.

The electronic training jacket is an electronic file that integrates Navy-training databases so that sailors can view and print from a single source all documented information on training and education accomplishments, advancement status, qualifications and certifications.

The Education Roadmap simplifies the process for obtaining a college degree. By using a roadmap tailored to their rate and rating, sailors learn how to gain maximum credit for their Navy training and experience and how to transfer college credits from other institutions and specialized schools.

College credit for Navy training is applied to the sailor and Marine American Council on Education Registry Transcript, available through the Navy Knowledge Online and Navy College Program Web sites. The information is documented in a sailor’s ETJ and 5VM. The Navy Education Resource Center provides access to study guides and practice exams for the Armed Forces Vocational Aptitude Battery and General Educational Development tests, as well as College Level Examination Programs, Scholastic Aptitude Tests and more.

NKO’S FUTURE

As with any program, the advent of technology and information technology systems allows NKO to grow and improve. Future changes will incorporate a new search engine that crosses applications that interface with the NKO portal, an improved library-content-management system and adds encryption to the user authentication.

“NKO’s growth has been exponential,” David said. “It has become the go-to portal for a sailor’s training, education and career management, and we’ve designed it to fit into the work day and enable sailors to make career decisions within the Navy and beyond. We continue to analyze how sailors use the NKO, and are looking at tools that will allow metrics to be gathered to help us determine how to make the Web portal even better in the future.

“Sea Warrior, supported by NKO, is a key element in the Navy’s transformation,” explained David. “It is all about fleet readiness. We want to ensure we have the right sailor, in the right place, at the right time, with the right knowledge to meet the Navy’s mission requirements.”

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Sailors can learn more about Navy Knowledge Online’s functionalities and capabilities by exploring the links on the NKO home page. A good place to start is with the self-paced tutorial called, “DISCOVER Navy Knowledge Online” found on the “About NKO” page, by clicking on a hyperlink located in the top right corner of every NKO page. More tutorials and various user guides can be found on the same page. ♦

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