[Trainer-Talk] Practice Documents

[David Andrews]

You said one thing, about comments in track changes. I believe that 
track changes is separate from comments.

Also, people on our blindlaw list have a good deal of experience with 
track changes, as many legal types use it extensively.

Dave

At 03:23 PM 11/16/2022, you 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