Live elearning

Not being content with 4 new Resource Development Advisors in the Elearning Development & Implementation team, Pippa was created this week, and named by Wendy.

Bringing four new staff members into a team (or what was left of it) is an interesting task and over the break I was musing about how best to explain the nature of the role on a day-to-day basis. Let’s see, I could have:

• passed out a copy of the Statement of Duties
• written a list of common tasks
• talked about workflow
• concocted a story about her week, or
• asked one of the existing RDAs to describe a typical week

When doing my planning I did write some notes down and got the content I wanted to convey about both what Pippa did, and also how she did it. OK information but not very exciting in that form. It all got a bit ‘listy’ and I felt it might come across as an overwhelming to-do list to some of the new staff.

And then I had a brainwave!

I quickly found a DIY diary page generator (thanks to http://www.diyplanner.com/node/6210 ) and mocked up a handwritten week of diary entries.

Pippa - Click for full week view (pdf)

I believe this was a good way of showing this information in a very human way. It enabled discussion about working hours, dedicating time to your own professional development, the way that ‘drop-ins’ can use chunks of time very easily and more.

So often we go to a computer to generate ‘tidy’ looking info but sometimes there is real value to be gained by using imagery that is very much human-generated.