Lesson in Dyslexia

I've always known the importance of providing adjustments during training to accomodate people with dyslexia, but i never did anything about it until yesterday when i attended a course on Dyslexia Awareness. There were two reasons i attended the course. Firstly my manager wanted me to know about the subject in case i needed to support an apprentice i am currently managing in case the apprentice did have dyslexia (my manager suspected this). Secondly each member of the learning and development has to quality check at least two of the training courses we deliver.

Suffice to say I found the course very interesting and from a learning and development perspective I came away with the following learning points.

1. In preparing for classroom training print handouts on coloured paper since people with dyslexia struggle to read black font on white back grounds.
2. If you can't print on coloured paper make available transparent coloured covered sheets which people with dyslexia can overlay on documents they want to read during the training.
3. Break material down into groups of three to prevent information overload. For example, three objectives, three learning points, three bullet points.
4. Prepare slides with lighter coloured backgrounds.
5. Colours that have been recommended for backgrounds are light blue and light yellow although there is another argument that a rainbow of colours is recommended since sensitivity to colours may differ between individuals with dyslexia.

Talking about taking responsibility for my learning. I took one step today. I started learning how to create an elearning course with Udutu (www.udutu.com). Udutu is a web based instructional design tool for creating elearning courses. It is totally web based so you don't need to download or install anything on your computer. My aim is to learn how to design a basic elearning course as I have never done this before. I think it is a great and affordable tool to create and deliver elearning courses and also to teach people how to design elearning courses.

I intend to learn one new learning and development related technology per month so this is the one I am learning in July.

It's time to take responsibility

I've finally decided to take more responsibility for my learning. I believe as a learning and development practitioner i should be a role model of the importance of learning to others. Hence I have started this diary to record what i am learning on a daily basis. Well not quite on a daily basis but at least once a week.