[Trainer-Talk] Practice Documents

[Brian Vogel]

Matthew,

I can't be of real assistance on this one, other than lending you a bit of
support.  I have been tutoring for over a decade now, mostly with
individuals who have recently (not really, really recently, but not 10
years ago, either) lost their vision or have conditions where it's clear
that blindness is the end result.  I have never found that "generic
examples" work very well for most training because they have very little
salience for the client.  They're often also wildly different from exactly
what the client has to deal with.

It sounds like this is a private client in a business setting, and if this
is the case then it's entirely reasonable to assign them homework, and that
can include assembling copies of actual work documents that can be worked
on in the context of training.  There are rare instances, e.g., individuals
with security clearances working on material that requires "need to know,"
where these cannot be assembled, but that's the exception, not the rule.

They really do need to meet you halfway so that what you train with has
actual immediate significance and you're focusing your effort on typical
tasks, as things can get far away from those if you're teaching all the
abstractions.

Brian

On Wed, Nov 16, 2022 at 4:25 PM Matthew Horspool via Trainer-Talk <
trainer-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> I've just joined this list. By way of introduction, I'm totally blind and
> have been a power user of assistive technology for the past 20 years or so.
> Just before the pandemic, a friend switched from freelancing to full-time
> employment and, in the absence of anyone better qualified, passed me one or
> two small contract training jobs that he was no longer able to fulfil. The
> agency received good feedback on my training from the client and have since
> sent me quite a few more jobs, and I find I'm rather enjoying it! I'm very
> much learning how to train as I go along though, and although I seem to be
> good at explaining things and tailoring my approach to suit the client, I'm
> still coming across more than my fair share of unexpected sticking points.
> One such situation occurred earlier this week. The client wanted to know
> how to read and respond to comments and tracked changes in Word. I said I
> was happy to teach this and asked him to find me a document with some
> examples. This was in a corporate setting, and since he was the one asking
> for this training, I thought it must be something he had to deal with
> regularly, or at the very least that he would have set aside the last
> troublesome document he came across in anticipation (the training has been
> on the cards for a couple of months now). Unfortunately this was not the
> case, but rather than telling me this at the outset, he proceeded to waste
> a good chunk of time looking for one. We have another session in a
> fortnight's time, so in the end I suggested we move onto the next item on
> his list and come back to tracked changes next time, by which point he will
> have hopefully found a document we can work on together.
> My question, however, is what to do if he hasn't. We could create a sample
> document there and then, of course. This would at least have the advantage
> of teaching him how to create comments as well as read them, and indeed we
> may end up needing to add things to an existing document anyway. The
> downside, however, is that the document will necessarily be quite short,
> and the comment threads not very detailed.
> I'm therefore thinking I should prepare a sample document for us to work
> on. I'm more than happy to do this, as it will undoubtedly come in useful
> for other clients in the future. However, given that this is the case, I
> wondered whether anyone else had already created sample documents for these
> sorts of sessions that they wouldn't mind sharing with me? Indeed, is there
> perhaps some value in establishing a central repository of practice
> documents for AT trainers, in say a shared Dropbox folder or Google Drive?
> Does such a repository already exist - if so, how does one join it?
> Let me know what you think, and if you are prepared to share any practice
> documents of your own, feel free to email me off-list.
> Many thanks and best wishes,
> Matthew
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