RLP 110: Development Activities – Certification Preparation

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 110: Development Activities for Certification. Welcome to Research Like a Pro a Genealogy Podcast about taking your research to the next level, hosted by Nicole Dyer and Diana Elder accredited genealogy professional. Diana and Nicole are the mother-daughter team at FamilyLocket.com and the creators of the Amazon bestselling book, Research Like a Pro a Genealogists Guide. I’m Nicole co-host of the podcast join Diana and me as we discuss how to stay organized, make progress in our research and solve difficult cases.

Nicole (42s):
Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome to the show. I’m Nicole Dyer co-host of Research Like a Pro, and I’m here with accredited genealogist, my wonderful mother, Diana Elder. Hi Diana.

Diana (58s):
Hi, Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (1m 0s):
I’m doing great. I’m excited to talk about certification again with you.

Diana (1m 5s):
Great. It’s been so fun going through all of these requirements and I love contrasting it with accreditation. And today we have a really fun topic, so I’m excited to talk about it, but first let’s do our listener spotlight and this is from Bug Nerd, this title of the review is “Worth your time, by and far the best Genealogy Podcasts out there. I finally caught up on all the past episodes after discovering this a couple months ago. I like that they don’t have ads and sponsorships for big companies, just a quick plug for their book and e-course, I also appreciate that they take the time to edit the audio of each episode. So the conversation is concise and easy to listen to. They are incredibly knowledgeable and professional in their approach to research.

Diana (1m 48s):
It’s not a mystery, why they are both successful professional genealogists. I look forward to the episode where you have to change the intro to accredited genealogy professionals, plural. May I request a future topic on newspaper research.” Well, thank you for that awesome review, newspaper research would be a great topic. We love it when our listeners give us ideas for future podcasts. So thank you for all of those great comments.

Nicole (2m 12s):
And yes, I already added that to our podcast schedule because I love newspaper research and I think we should definitely do that. I am also looking forward to the episode where we do change the intro because I have finally finished my certification, although we wouldn’t be able to put accredited genealogy professionals, plural, because Diana will be accredited and I will be certified. So we’re going to be opposing types of credentials soon.

Diana (2m 37s):
Yeah, we’ll have to come up with some good way to say that.

Nicole (2m 41s):
Credentialed genealogists?

Diana (2m 43s):
There you go.

Nicole (2m 44s):
Assuming I can ever get this done, which is really good that we’re talking about certification again today because it forces me to reevaluate where I am in my progress and just get me back on track again. It’s easy to get off track when the kids are home for summer and we’ve been doing the other activities and vacations.

Diana (2m 60s):
Yeah, summertime I think it’s hard to focus and concentrate. I have to give myself a break every half an hour to go at least walk outside and get away from my computer because I want to take advantage of this beautiful time of year.

Nicole (3m 13s):
All right, well, today we’re talking about the development activities element of the portfolio for certification and in the Application Guide, it says activities: list the genealogy related activities that helped you prepare for certification, and in a sentence or two, discuss how each activity helped you improve your, (A) attainment of genealogical standards; (B) knowledge of genealogically useful materials and contexts; (C) skills and reconstructing in unknown, or forgotten relationships, families, people, groups, and events, and (D) abilities to present your findings to others.

Nicole (3m 55s):
Your discussion should cover formal and informal development activities in which you engaged. And then it references standards 89 through 90. So what I have seen in the certification discussion group as an example of this part of the portfolio is somewhat like a resume or a list of courses and experiences that applicants have done. It’s usually like a page or two, sometimes a little bit longer with what people have done to learn and how it helped them. So if you look in genealogy standards, standard 89 and 90 talk about these different development activities.

Nicole (4m 36s):
And what I read from the Application Guide is basically a quote from standard 89 and then standard 90 just goes into development activities can be formal or informal, and formal includes conferences, webinars, workshops, and so forth. And informal is like more practice doing genealogy research, critiquing others, work, getting your own written work, critiqued reading, and studying journal articles and so forth. Of course, back when I first decided to do certification, I looked at this and thought to myself, I have not done as many formal development activities as I would like. So I started down that path and spent all last year doing some formal institutes and study groups.

Nicole (5m 20s):
On the BCG website they have a page called educational activities. I’ll put the link in the show notes, but it has a very interesting chart that is the pass rate for select educational groups. And so when I saw this chart, I realized that I needed to do some more education. And what the chart basically shows is that people who have done no formal education are only 14% successful based on applicants from 2013 through 2019. And so only 14% of those were successful who had no education that was formal. And then people who had three or more institutes, 70% of them were successful in their portfolio.

Nicole (6m 1s):
So I noticed that I should do some institutes. So last year I did three. And then it also shows that people who do the ProGen study group, of that group, 75% of them were successful in their application. And then the highest group was the group who had done at least one Institute and one extended genealogical education opportunity. So 78% of them were successful and extended opportunity would be like a longer course, like one that you can do through Boston University. So what we’re going to do for today’s podcast is talk about some of the educational activities that are listed on the BCG website. And we added a couple more in addition to that, that can help prepare for the portfolio.

Nicole (6m 45s):
And we’ll kind of discuss what has been helpful for us in helping to gain these four different aspects of genealogical education mentioned in the Application Guide about the standards and using different kinds of genealogy materials and your skills and reconstructing relationships, and then your ability to present the findings. So we’ll talk about those, we’ll start with formal educational activities and there’s different categories. There’s institutes, there’s academic programs. So Diana, can you talk to us first about institutes?

Diana (7m 19s):
Sure. I kind of I’m thinking back to when we first heard of an Institute and we just really didn’t know anything about institutes and we were at RootsTech and somebody said, well, have you gone to SLIG? And like what’s SLIG? And then we discovered it was the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy and started attending that. Cause if you’ve been listening to this podcast, we’ve talked about them quite a bit. So you probably now have heard the word, but there are several institutes held throughout the country. There’s GenFed, which takes place at the National Archives and was the very first Institute. It began in 1950, it’s in Washington DC, and it’s, co-sponsored by the Board for Certification of Genealogists.

Diana (8m 1s):
And our colleague Robin did that last year. And she was so blown away by all the things that she found and learned there. So that’s on my bucket list to get to GenFed some year and do an Institute all at the National Archives. After that, then other institutes began and we have the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh, which is shortened to GRIP and they have multiple sessions each summer. It’s at the Roche college campus in Pittsburgh and other locations that is a week long Institute and you stay in the dorms on campus. And I would love to go some year. I haven’t been to that one, but it sounds really fun.

Diana (8m 43s):
The next one is IGHR, which I just attended virtually that’s the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research and that was the second Institute to begin. And that was 1962 held in Athens, Georgia and the Georgia genealogical society hosts that. And again, it’s a five day program generally at the end of July, a lot of the courses there center on Southern research, but they have also a lot of really good methodology and they always have an African-American course, which was the one that I took. And then we have SLIG, the first one that we ever heard of, the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy in Salt Lake City and that is managed by the Utah Genealogical Association.

Diana (9m 27s):
And that one is held in January. So if you’re ready for something interesting in January, kind of to beat the winter blahs, SLIG is a great one and that will be held virtually this year. So an opportunity for anyone not wanting to travel again, you can try out SLIG. Now there are other institutes that are just more focused. There’s one that they call MAAGI or MAGI, I’m not sure how they call it, but it’s the Midwest African American genealogical Institute at the Allen County Library in Fort Wayne. Actually, I think they call it MAAGI cause we have, I heard several people talk about it last week, and then there’s the British Institute. And that is of course all about British genealogy.

Diana (10m 9s):
And that one is an October in Salt Lake City. So you can see they’re all a lot of formal opportunities for these institutes where you sign up, what they all have in common is that it’s an intensive program generally for three days to a week. And you sit in class all day long. Sometimes you have assignments, but you’re really immersed in a specific topic.

Nicole (10m 33s):
The ones I attended were a SLIG and I did two that were virtual. They were the first Institute to start offering virtual courses. And I really enjoyed their intermediate foundations course and the advanced DNA practicum. I think it was called the advanced evidence analysis practicum, and the one I did was all DNA cases. And then I did another DNA course at the SLIG in person. So if you’re considering doing a virtual Institute, you might want to look and see if it’s every day all day, or if it’s every week you have a meeting. I really liked having one meeting every week and spacing it out. I just felt like it gave me more time to soak in the material and do the assignments, but going all week everyday, like Diana did last week, you also can learn a ton obviously, but I think it’s a little more taxing.

Diana (11m 23s):
I agree. I’m kind of hoping that COVID will make some changes and that maybe these big Institute programs will offer more of those virtual opportunities because I think it would be really great to not have to travel as much and do it from home and space it out a bit.

Nicole (11m 43s):
Well, a lot of the academic programs I’m going to talk about now are virtual and spaced out. So these are great opportunities. Some of them are, you know, a little bit more pricey. You just have to look into it because they are through an academic institution. Usually you pay by credit hour or sometimes they have like a set fee, but it’s usually a bit more than an Institute, but you can probably expect a little bit more instructor feedback on your assignments and that kind of thing. One of the most well-respected programs in the country for genealogy is the Boston University certificate program. And it’s a 14 week advanced certificate in genealogical studies.

Nicole (12m 24s):
It’s not a credit course and it is online. So I think that’s a wonderful opportunity for anyone looking into becoming a professional or a credentialed genealogist. Boston University also offers a four week Genealogy Essentials course. And that is also online. Another university that offers a genealogy program that is part of their degree program is Brigham Young University. They’re actually the only university in north America that offers a bachelor’s degree in family history and genealogy. So you can take a look at that and you can not do that online.

Diana (13m 1s):
BYU Idaho has two things that you can do, depending on how many credits you take. You can do an associates degree in family history online, or a family history certificate. So they have a couple of different offerings. So that’s actually a really good option for anyone who wants to do an all online program.

Nicole (13m 22s):
Excelsior College is based in Albany, New York, and they offer undergraduate courses in genealogy, but they are credit ones. And so you have to pay per credit hour. And when I inquired a few months ago, they said that the courses are $510 per credit hour. And so if you want to learn more about that, you can go to their website, but they have an introduction to genetic genealogy that is eight weeks long and three credit hours. And they also have an advanced genealogical research course. That’s 15 weeks long. This one’s more of a practicum where you work on solving cases, which I would highly recommend doing a practicum because I loved my practicum. I did through the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, but I found an article a couple of years ago about this course that I will link to in the show notes.

Nicole (14m 12s):
And it talks about what the course is like. And one of the instructors then, I don’t know if she still teaches, is Melindy Bern. And she is a former editor of the NGSQ and she talks about the cases that they solve and how they learn about methods and logical arguments and deductive reasoning. So I think this would be a really good course for anybody who wants to really hone their advanced writing skills and problem solving skills. And then there’s also the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, IHGS, and this is based in Canterbury, England. They have correspondence courses in genealogy, which just means you can send in your assignments by email or postal mail.

Nicole (14m 56s):
So you can do them virtually from the States. They do focus on British research and they do have beginner, intermediate and advanced options. And they even have a heraldry online course, if you want it to focus on that. Another option is the National Institute for Genealogical Studies and this is based in Canada. They have certificate programs for various countries. So you can do an American certificate in genealogy, Australia, and Canadian and so forth. They have a lot of instructors whose names I recognize and respect. They have specific courses if you just want to take like a smaller course and not do the full certificate program for whatever country or type of research they’re offering.

Nicole (15m 40s):
So they really have a lot of offerings there. Lastly, we have the University of Strathclyde and their center for lifelong learning has some postgraduate degree programs. This is based in Scotland. Their post-graduate program is called Genealogical, Paleographic and Heraldic Studies. So they offer three different things. They have a post-graduate certificate and that’s the first year. And that deals mainly with Scottish, English and Irish records. And then they have a post graduate diploma in year two, which adds American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, British Empire, Jewish, European, and other sources.

Nicole (16m 20s):
And then the master’s dissertation provides the opportunity to choose an individual topic of interest. So it looks like you can get a master’s degree. And Diana, can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Diana (16m 33s):
Yeah, so my friend graduated from Brigham Young University with her bachelor’s degree in family history. And then she went on to do the University of Strathclyde with an emphasis in DNA, and she did it all online. I think it took her about a year, maybe a year and a half, and she really enjoyed it. It was a lot of work, but she now has her master’s degree and she is working at Brigham Young University in their family history program as an instructor and working with students. So I’ve only heard good things about Strathclyde.

Nicole (17m 9s):
Fantastic. So let’s talk now about conferences.

Diana (17m 12s):
Well, conferences are one of our loves because they’re really fun. You get to go learn about a variety of topics. There are conferences from the national level to the regional level. One of the biggest conferences is the National Genealogies Society conference, which we often just call NGS, and it focuses on genealogical standards, BCG skill building, work products, two hour certification seminar. So many things to help you build your skills. And this year for the first time it was virtual and it was fun for us to be part of it, even though we didn’t get to go in person and present, we enjoyed recording our lectures and we’re hoping some year to do that in person.

Diana (18m 0s):
Now, FGS is the Federation of Genealogical Society’s conference, and this is the last summer that that will be held and it is virtual as well. And starting next year, it will be merging with NGS. So those were two really long standing national conferences. Then if you’re a professional genealogist or wanting to be a professional genealogist, the APG or Association of Professional Genealogists holds an annual conference and we call that the PMC, Professional Management Conference. We have a lot of acronyms in genealogy. I have been to the APG conference and presented at that. And that is fun because you are a much smaller group and everyone is trying to do client work or be a professionals and you have topics that are really specific to that.

Diana (18m 49s):
Now, if you are a Jewish genealogist, there is the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. IAJGS there’s probably a way of saying that that’s easy, and they have an annual five day conference. And then one of our favorites is RootsTech, and that’s held annually in Salt Lake City, generally in February. And this is a great one for beginners. They tend to have a lot of beginner classes and have started adding more advanced classes. Then if you are interested in DNA, there’s the Institute for Genetic Genealogy, IforGG, and that’s organized by CC Moore and Tim Janssen.

Diana (19m 30s):
We also have regional conferences. There’s the New England Regional Genealogical Consortium. There’s the Ohio Genealogical Society. There’s the Southern California Genealogical Society Danbury, which will be held in June of 2021 and a virtual conference with the genetic genealogy conference just before that. So the Danbury I’ve heard is really fun and I would love to try that one out as well. And the Texas State Genealogical Society has a conference each year. So if you are in one of these regions, maybe travel to one of those areas when those go in person again.

Diana (20m 10s):
And if you’re interested in researching in any of those areas, that would be great to go to a conference there and get really hands-on with some of the records, the methodology for those locations,

Nicole (20m 23s):
Maybe more regional conferences out there that we didn’t list. So make sure you check in your area and you might be wondering why the Institute for Genetic Genealogy is listed as a conference and that’s because it fits in with the conference structure rather than the Institute structure. Institutes you pick one course and you stay with that same class of people all week, and you have the same instructor or coordinator for the course. And you kind of sit in a classroom and do assignments. And a conference is different where you get up and you walk to a different class. Each time everybody can fill their own schedule with whatever types of classes fits their interest. So I think the Institute for Genetic Genealogy is more like a conference, and I haven’t attended that, but I have purchased some of the videos from past conferences because they offer them on their website.

Nicole (21m 12s):
So you can do that if you want to learn a little bit more about genetic genealogy. Okay, let’s talk about the study groups now. So the one that is highly recommended for those seeking certification is ProGen, which is short for professional genealogy. And it studies the textbook Professional Genealogy edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills. And the current study group program uses the second edition, which is called professional genealogy preparation practice and standards. And this is a 12 month study program. I’m currently doing it and Diana is a mentor for one, and she graduated from ProGen number of what?

Diana (21m 55s):
I was 33. And I’m a mentor for 44.

Nicole (21m 57s):
And I’m currently in ProGen 46. So you can see it’s been going on for several years and it’s respected. And it’s a chance for you to practice your portfolio elements and get peer feedback on them. Of course, you can’t use those for your portfolio, but it gives you a chance to practice before you create your actual work samples. Each ProGen study group has either an accredited genealogist or a certified genealogists as a mentor to the group. And so they participate in the monthly discussions. They offer guidance, but they don’t review the student’s assignments like an academic program would do this program more relies on the peer review and the peer discussion.

Nicole (22m 42s):
Another opportunity for a study group that the BCG lists on their educational activities page is the NGSQ study group. And this is a group that discusses articles in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly publication and reviews, these case studies, so that you can really learn about the Proof Arguments and the case study aspect of the portfolio. So it’s a really good way to see how people structure their Proof Arguments to learn more about case studies and what would be considered a significant problem of identity or relationship as is required for the case study. So I’ve been part of an NGSQ study group. At first, I joined the formal one up on the NGSQ study group website, which I will link in the show notes and they had kind of one that just went all month.

Nicole (23m 29s):
And it was like an email group where you just respond by email. They also have ones that needed a specific time on Tuesday. So you can look at those and see if you want to join one, or you can start a new one. They have that option too. So I really recommend doing a study group for the NGSQ because it really forces you to read the articles and dig in and answer some questions about them. And then another thing that BCG lists on their education page for a study groups is the gen proofs study groups. But I don’t think these are still going on. They studied the textbook by Tom Jones, Mastering Genealogical Proof. And from what I could see, the last group that graduated was from 2017.

Nicole (24m 12s):
So when I saw this, I really wanted to do it because I had the book Mastering Genealogical Proof, but I hadn’t really studied it. So I just talked to some ladies in my certification discussion group, and we decided to form our own little study group to study that book. And it was a wonderful experience. So I highly recommend that you form your own study group for that and work through the book because it has, you know, the questions at the end of each chapter. And then you can look up the answers in the back. So it’s really easy to do a study group with that book. And then I already mentioned the certification discussion group, which I highly recommend Jill Morelli runs those. And she just goes through each portfolio element and you get to see some examples and you get to ask questions and it really demystifies the certification process.

Nicole (25m 1s):
Our study group, the Research Like a Pro study group has been very helpful for me as I’ve done that six times and had to work through the process of forming an objective, planning out research, doing deep analysis and writing up my conclusions. So anytime you can do that, the better you get at it. And it’s really helped me to nail down my citations and really understand a lot of the basics of writing. And then of course there are independent study classes,

Diana (25m 33s):
Right? And I think these work really well for people that want to do things on their own time. I think if you’re a self-starter and you can get yourself organized and work through something, then this works well for you. If you’re not, then you probably want to join something where you are forced to get an assignment done or to meet. So it really depends on your personality, but the NGS, the National Genealogical Society, they offer a series of courses that are all independent study. And then of course we have our Research Like a Pro e-course. That is the same content as our study group, but it is independent study as well. So I think you just have to decide what works well for you. And I just want to say, after reviewing all these different types of education, I think it’s very helpful to sit down and really think about what your goal is like Nicole’s goal is certification, but for me as a professional researcher and an accredited genealogist, my goal now is just to keep working on improving various parts of my research, which is why did the African-American Institute, or I like to do DNA institutes.

Diana (26m 39s):
You know, there’s always something we can learn. So make an education plan wherever you are in your genealogy journey and consider some formal education. So let’s just talk for a minute about informal education. There’s so many things that we can do just on our own. We can read journal articles. Nicole mentioned National Genealogical Society Quarterly. You can read a lot by studying those, and there are other journals as well. If you are a Texas researcher, you might want to join their society and get their journal depending on where you live and your research focus, you might want to join that regional society and start reading their journals.

Diana (27m 23s):
It’s always great to get some peer review of your work by others and getting feedback on your own work. So you could just share Research Reports with a friend, you know, say I’m working on this. Will you take a look at this, get someone else to look at your research. I know sometimes we feel like we’re in a bubble. And so it’s really good to have someone else see what we’re doing. So we also might want to tackle some of those difficult problems and try something out of our comfort zone. If you’ve never done a DNA project, maybe start working to learn DNA and try to use it in genealogy, or if there’s a Eastern European ancestor, you’ve really not wanted to work on because it sounds so hard dive in and start learning about that.

Diana (28m 10s):
So you can work on the outline. There’s always something new we can learn to challenge ourselves. And it’s great to do that, to get more education and just continue learning.

Nicole (28m 24s):
Fantastic. So bringing this back to the portfolio. So if you are planning to submit your portfolio, and you’re thinking about your education opportunities and your development activities, what you’re going to need to do for this work sample or this element of the portfolio is list each development activity that you did, whether formal or informal and in a sentence or two, describe how it helped you with the four aspects of developing your education, which were to attain the genealogical standards, understand how to use genealogical materials and contexts and your skills and reconstructing, forgotten relationships, people, groups, and events, and your ability to present your findings to others.

Nicole (29m 10s):
So hopefully the formal and informal education that you did will help you in these four areas and you will be able to articulate how it helped you and what you’ve learned. I need to go and make sure that I write that out and kind of have a little summary of that. It’s probably easier to list that immediately after you do the opportunity. So it will be harder looking back, you know, to RootsTech 2017 or whenever the first RootsTech I went to, to remember what I really gained from that, but I’ll do my best, but the ones that are more fresh in my memory, it will be easier discuss. So if you are just thinking about getting certified someday, but you’re starting your education now, maybe just start keeping a running list of your development activities.

Nicole (29m 53s):
I have been keeping a list of the conferences that I watch and the webinars and all of those things. So, and that will be really useful to you when you’re ready to submit your portfolio.

Diana (30m 4s):
Well, I think it’s been fun just to review all these different educational opportunities and just starting to think about myself for 2021, what would be great for the next step of education? I will be excited to see you as a third ified genealogists, because I think you have really done so much education that you have checked all those boxes. And I think you’re feeling super confident about where you are with your education and that’s, that’s where we want to be. We want to feel confident.

Nicole (30m 35s):
Yeah. I hope it’s not a misplaced confidence because you know, sometimes that brings about areas where you overlook things. I am feeling like I can do it now, whereas before I was very scared, but I also, I’m trying to make sure that I keep reviewing all the requirements and reviewing the standards and continue to really come at everything from a very analytical point of view. I want to do things slowly so that I can make sure to not overlook anything, I guess.

Diana (31m 2s):
Well, I think you’re on the right track. And I just wanted to mention in closing that wherever you are in your genealogy journey, if you’re thinking of getting a credential, either accreditation or certification really is that that’s sort of the first step. You do a lot to get to that point. But once you are there, we have to renew as credentialed professionals every five years. And we have to show that we have continue to educate ourselves in the field. So it’s not like you just get your credential and you say, okay, I’m good, I’ve learned everything I need to know. We are all continually learning and getting better at what we do. So it’s good to be in the focus, the mindset of education.

Nicole (31m 46s):
It is. Absolutely. Well, thanks everyone for listening this week and we hope you have a good week and we’ll talk to you again next time.

Diana (31m 52s):
All right. Bye bye everyone.

Nicole (31m 55s):
Bye bye. Thank you for listening. We hope that something you heard today will help you make progress in your research. If you want to learn more, purchase our book Research Like a Pro a Genealogist Guide on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our Research Like a Pro online course or join our next Study Group. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com. To share your progress and ask questions join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our eCourse or Study Group. If you like what you heard and would like to support this podcast, please subscribe, rate, and review. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.