Month: December 2018

@TisForTraining Resource Recommendation – Universal Design: Places to Start

Photo of Jay DolmageJay Dolmage, associate professor at the University of Waterloo (Canada) is a committed to disability rights.  His writings on the topic include the book Disability Rhetoric  (2014), Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education (2017), and Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability (2018).  He is the Founding Editor of the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies. In 2015, he published online a “long list of UD suggestions, organized according to some of the different modes of ‘delivery’ or styles of teaching in higher education.”  The list – “Universal Design: Places to Start” – in a 23-page appendix (PDF) in Disability Studies Quarterly.

On T is for Training, we have frequently discussed elements of universal design, without using that phrase.  Some of the suggestions are things we’ve discussed, while some are not.  With an increased focus on accessibility, this list is definitely worth using.

@TisForTraining 239 : Twisted Learning

Slide with textOn the call were Diane Huckabay, Paul Signorelli, Jill Hurst-Wahl, Aaron Blumberg, and Maurice Coleman. We talked about the “Top 10 Learning And Development Trends For 2018.” Written in March, we decided to to reflect on whether we had experienced any of the trends this year.  The trends are:

  1. Personalization
  2. Bite-Sized Support Resources
  3. Robust Reports And Analytics
  4. Self-Paced Online Training
  5. Gamification
  6. Collaborative Online Learning Cultures
  7. Responsive Design
  8. Virtual And Augmented Reality
  9. Online Mentorship Programs
  10. Social Learning Experiences

Is there an 11th trend? Paul, proposed understanding that training/learning is both a process and an event.

We touched on all of the trends above and brought in examples from our training and work lives.  Listen to the call on the TalkShoe web site.

Our next T will be on Friday, Jan. 4, 2019 at 2 p.m. ET.

Happy New Year!

@TisForTraining 238 : Your Past is the Present or It’s Really Hard Fast

Nametag where you can write your preferred pronouns.

First you should know that this episode starts about 5 minutes into the recording.  So fast forward to the five-minute mark.  (We’re still not used to the upgrades that TalkShoe did this year….and we’re technology people.)

On the call were Diane Huckabay, Andrea Snyder, Jill Hurst-Wahl, Paul Signorelli, and Maurice Coleman.  Maurice told us briefly about the MDLIBTECH one-day event (MD Tech Connect / #MDtechconnect2018) he had just attended at the Universities at Shady Grove.  The keynote speaker was Matthew Reidsma, who has written several articles and books, including “Algorithmic Bias in Library Discovery Systems.” This launched us into a discussion about how to eliminate bias in our training sessions. Our T is for Training started and ended on that topic (eliminate bias in our training ).  In the middle we talked about the adverse affect social media can have on use when parts of our past resurface and affect what we are doing today. The phrase “the past is the present” was used several times, as we acknowledged that who we were in the past (and what we said or did) represents who were are today.  In terms of that and in fighting bias in training sessions, we all noted that “it is really hard.”

This was an important conversation for us, because it acknowledged places where we need to be more thoughtful and where we know we will make mistakes.  You can  hear us thinking, struggling, and striving.

Our next T is for Training will be on December 21 and it will be our last for 2018.  We hope you’ll join us!