RLP 192: SLIG Accreditation Course

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 192: SLIG accreditation course. 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 authors of Research Like a Pro A Genealogist Guide. With Robin Wirthlin they also co-authored the companion volume, Research Like a Pro with DNA. Join Diana and Nicole as they discuss how to stay organized, make progress in their research and solve difficult cases. Let’s go.

Nicole (41s):
Let’s go, Hi everyone. Welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (47s):
Hi, Nicole, how are you today?

Nicole (49s):
I’m doing well. I am rewatching some of the videos from the SLIG course. Last week, we get one week to review any videos, and I really enjoyed my course about DNA proof arguments. So we’ll have to talk about that sometime.

Diana (1m 3s):
Oh, that’ll be great. I can’t wait to hear all about it.

Nicole (1m 5s):
What about you?

Diana (1m 7s):
I finished coordinating the SLIG course on accreditation, which we’re going to talk about today and give everybody the inside scoop on that. Now that that is done. I’m back to my morning reading and study, and that has felt really good too. I have been reading several different things, but one of the ones I returned to was the book Genealogy and the Law, published through the National Genealogical Society, their, one of their special topics series. It’s by Kay Haviland Freilich and William B Freilich. And I really like the format of these books. Other books in this series are two by Tom Jones, Mastering Genealogical Proof and Mastering Genealogical Documentation.

Diana (1m 55s):
And then the one by Blaine Bettinger and Debbie Parker Wayne, Genetic Genealogy in Practice. So these are great because they’re sort of workbooks. They teach a lesson and then they have questions that you can answer with the answers in the back. So you can go see if you did it right. And so with Genealogy and the Law, I’m just reading through it first. And then I think I’m going to go back and do all the questions and answers just to really get a foundation of what the book is trying to teach. And I’m enjoying it.

Nicole (2m 28s):
Thanks for sharing about that.

Diana (2m 29s):
Well, one of my goals is to take Judy Russell’s course at the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy on the law. And I believe she’s got a series of three. I think there’s an advanced one coming up in January. So I decided I would just do my own study and then see if I can get ready to take one of her courses.

Nicole (2m 50s):
Good idea. Well, we updated our Research Like a Pro online course, so I thought I would tell everybody about that. We added all new videos and we changed around kind of the order of the lessons and added another one at the very end of the Research Like a Pro process. We always talk about getting more organized and productivity, but we heard a lot of feedback that people want to talk about file organization at the beginning of the course or study group, because then they can use that file organization system that they set up while they’re downloading the records and documents they find. So we added that file organization topic to the beginning. So lesson one is now objectives, pedigree analysis, and file organization.

Nicole (3m 35s):
Then with the timeline and analysis of sources and information, we split that into two lessons and we put the source citations lesson with the timelines. So getting started with making your timeline and doing source citations is in lesson two. And lesson three is analysis of the information in your timeline and the sources, and then everything else after that proceeds like normal locality research. Number five is research planning. number six is research logs and number seven is report writing. And then we have a lesson on copyright proof arguments in publication. So that’s kind of a new one. And then the last lesson is just kind of about final steps, productivity, and education.

Nicole (4m 21s):
So if you’ve been thinking about signing up for the Research Like a Pro e-course, it’s all new videos and some new lessons in there. So you may want to go and check it out,

Diana (4m 34s):
Right? It’s fun to work things around and make changes that are necessary. I love getting feedback from people in our courses and trying to just make them better.

Nicole (4m 44s):
Yeah. We figured that out for Research Like a Pro study group, number seven, we’re getting ready for the fall Research Like a Pro study group number eight. So if you’re thinking about joining us for the study group setting registration for that will begin this summer. So the difference between the online course and the study group is the online course you get 12 months of access to work through it on your own time, more independent study. And then the study group is at a set time where we meet together weekly. And you have a peer group that you work together with and talk with and there’s peer review. But if you’d like to join us in the fall as a peer group leader, please apply on our website so that we can see your work. And hopefully we’ll get the chance to work with a lot of great peer group leaders.

Nicole (5m 26s):
Again, we should love the peer group leaders that help us out.

Diana (5m 30s):
We do, but let’s get to our topic for the day. We are going to talk all about the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy course that I was just involved in. This is going to be an overview of the course. I thought it might be interesting to just explain a little bit about what you have to do when you want to coordinate a course. Maybe you are thinking that it would be fun to do one of these institutes. Maybe you’ve just never even thought of doing an Institute. We’ll give you some ideas of what’s involved in it behind the scenes, and then also for a student, if you want to take the course. So the title of the course was Becoming an Accredited Genealogist Professional, the Why the What, the How.

Diana (6m 17s):
And the reason that I became involved in this is because my job on the commission for ICAPGEN or the International Commission of Professional Genealogists is presentation specialist. So one of my jobs is to get the word out about accreditation and how to become accredited and the benefits of that. So I’ve done several things in the past where it’s take videos and different webinars for different groups. And my colleague, Lisa Stokes, hi, Lisa, Lisa listens to this podcast. We wanted to do a course. Lisa runs the ICAPGEN study group, and we envisioned this full length Institute course, that would go five days.

Diana (7m 2s):
We submitted a proposal to the Salt Lake Institute and they accepted it. And so then when they accepted it, everything went virtual. So the first year we decided not to do it, and we were all set to do it this next year in 2022, as a course in-person in Salt Lake City. And then they decided because of the virus to go virtual. So we ended up doing it virtual anyway, and we made adjustments and it actually went really well.

Nicole (7m 34s):
Wow. That’s a lot of being flexible there.

Diana (7m 37s):
Well, we didn’t want to postpone it again because we already had the syllabus created. We had everything set and we thought let’s just do it. And we had people that already registered. So, you know, when it went virtual, we actually picked up more students because they could not come to Salt Lake and they could just stay home.

Nicole (7m 56s):
Good.

Diana (7m 56s):
So when you propose a course, you have to do a formal proposal and you write this up in a document and send it in and you have to come up with a description and a title. I already read the title. So our description just gave more specifics about what we would do in the course. And it also goes up on the website. So anyone wondering if they want to take the course can read it. I’ll just read that, so you all know what this course was about. Earning the Accredited Genealogists credential with the International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists, ICAPGEN gives you an opportunity to demonstrate your research proficiency in a chosen region.

Diana (8m 40s):
Benefits include strengthened research skills, confidence in performing client work, and respect in the genealogy community. This interactive course will cover the requirements for each ICAPGEN testing level and give you valuable information needed for successful testing. Assignments will provide experience with skills needed for passing each level. You will use rubrics to evaluate your work and that of your peers, a four hour practice level three project, and a personalized meeting with an AIG mentor who’s knowledgeable in the chosen region of accreditation will cap off the week. The instruction labs and homework are designed to assist you in the skill building and preparation needed to start the accreditation process.

Diana (9m 21s):
Discover your accreditation readiness as you learn more about the testing process and receive peer and mentor feedback on your work.

Nicole (9m 26s):
Oh, that’s a great description. And I think it would be really desirable to join a course that has feedback.

Diana (9m 32s):
That’s one of the big things that we need to know is our work up to standard, or what do we need to improve on? How do we stack up when it comes to our research and our skills? So that was one of the things we envisioned would be really valuable for this course. Now you also in your proposal have to put an instruction level. So people will know, you know, am I ready to take this course? So we wrote, this course is for the advanced researcher who is ready to explore the accreditation process. We wanted to make sure people knew this would be advanced level. It wasn’t really for someone who was just thinking about becoming more advanced, you needed to already have some skills, or we were worried that that people would get lost with some of the lessons in the feedback and assignments.

Nicole (10m 17s):
Yeah, that’s good to have an idea of what you’re getting into.

Diana (10m 21s):
It really is. So we had to come up with an anticipated target audience for our proposal, which, you know, it wasn’t published online, but it’s who we were envisioning would take our class. So we said, the audience for this course will be genealogists exploring the accreditation credential and the skills needed for success. They will be expected to have solid research skills and a chosen area of accreditation. The instruction labs and homework are designed to assist a candidate in the skill building and preparation needed to start the accreditation process.

Nicole (10m 51s):
Nice. So they should already have selected or thought about selecting a certain region,

Diana (10m 57s):
Right? Because we wanted to have very specific feedback from people in a similar region researching in England as quite different than researching in the United States Southwest. And so we thought it would be beneficial to have people come together and be able to look at each other’s work, you know, in a similar region. Oh, so we needed to already have a region in mind.

Nicole (11m 20s):
That would be really helpful.

Diana (11m 22s):
So we did come up with a list of prerequisites so that people could judge themselves, we had is our prerequisites to read the, ICAPGEN guide to applying for an accredited genealogists credential that’s online. So anybody can go read that, but we wanted our attendees to have read that and then to have chosen and accreditation region and to have completed research for one generation of the four generation project. And we wanted to use that outline throughout the course though, we wanted people to not necessarily have a completely written up, but have an outline, you know, have all of your sources backing up your birth, marriage and death for that. First-generation have the research basically done and then have a research log all ready to go that you’ve worked on because that would be part of our peer review.

Diana (12m 13s):
And then have that outline in a decent format and to also just keep getting experienced in writing genealogical reports or narratives or summaries.

Nicole (12m 24s):
Yeah, I think the more experience we have in writing, the more useful Institute courses are that have writing involved or talk about writing in my course to be submitted a writing sample and it got live edited. It was really neat. So watching that really helped me think about how I can improve my writing, but if I had never written anything before it would have been harder,

Diana (12m 45s):
Well, it would be very intimidating because you are putting yourself out there to have your work reviewed, but you’ve never done it before. Maybe it’s the first time you’ve written something. So the more experience you get, the more you can appreciate getting some review on it. So another part of the proposal, we had to have an outline how the entire week would go and our course instructors all figured out and for the proposal, they wanted to see the photos of the instructors and have their bios. And that was mainly for putting on the website. So that’s all ready to go if it’s accepted. But I think it also helps those who are trying to decide if they want to have this course be part of the Institute so they can see the background and the experience of the instructors, because the idea is that you’ve got really great instructors throughout the whole week.

Diana (13m 39s):
And we did.

Nicole (13m 40s):
Yeah. I really appreciate having the bios of the instructors on the SLIG website. It helps you when you’re trying to pick a course just to learn about who would be teaching it.

Diana (13m 49s):
It does because you can see the breadth of experience that comes from all the different instructors and Lisa and I wanted to pull in other people with other experience. So the final part of the proposal is a questionnaire which doesn’t get published anywhere. You just answered it’s for those people on the committee who are choosing the courses. And the first one is why would this course add value to the Institute? How does this course differ from other courses on similar topics? Has it been taught before? Will it be taught elsewhere? You know, I think each Institute wants to have unique offerings in the way of course material. So that was actually pretty easy because there has not been a course on accreditation for a very, very long time, if ever so.

Diana (14m 39s):
Yep. It was unique and we don’t have plans to submit it elsewhere. So that was easy to, so that it would be unique.

Nicole (14m 50s):
That’s great. So what did the course look throughout the week?

Diana (14m 54s):
We try to do kind of a, a similar schedule in that we would have peer review each morning on the previous day’s assignment. And that was one of the benefits of going virtual, that our attendees were at home. You know, they were set up in their office with their home computers and not just sitting in a hotel room on a little laptop, trying to do assignments, which we’ve all tried before. And that can be kind of a challenge. And so we felt like they actually were able to do their homework pretty well. I mean, you still have the problems of being home and having other distractions, you know, maybe it balances out. So the very first morning we let everyone introduce themselves, introduced our instructors that morning.

Diana (15m 39s):
We had two classes on overview and I did both of those. Those were overview of accreditation and peer review, where I just went through the whole process. You know, we thought it would be good just to start at the beginning and go all the way through. And we would of course be going into those pieces later on. But I found when I was doing accreditation, I had so many questions that I needed to hear things over and over and over again, to make sure I was prepared for the testing and for turning in my fourth generation project. So it was good to have that nice overview. And then we were doing peer review and there’s some good practices for peer review.

Diana (16m 19s):
And so I went over those. So we would make sure we were getting quality peer review,

Nicole (16m 24s):
Kind of some ideas of how to give comments and things.

Diana (16m 27s):
Yes. You know, things like, always talk in the third person, comment on the work, not the person and to be positive, but then also point out places based on your experience where something else could have been done better. You know, it doesn’t do any good just to have somebody look at your work and say, oh, this is all great. I mean, it makes you feel good, but it doesn’t help you grow or get any better. So being able to give and to take peer review well is really important if you’re going to be a professional genealogists or, you know, a more advanced level. So then I did the next class also, which was diving deeper into that level one, four generation project. And we went through all the elements, you know, you have to do the report and the research log, the pedigree chart, the family group sheets, and each one of those has some specifics.

Diana (17m 20s):
So we went over the rubrics and just talked about the specific elements. It’s really important to pay attention to those rubrics because they, it’s not a secret how you’re going to pass. You have to make sure you hit everything. My job that morning was just to give an overview, which was actually kind of fun.

Nicole (17m 37s):
Yeah. I don’t think a lot of people have looked at the rubrics unless there really needs to have been accreditations. That’s kind of an interesting thing that maybe we could put it in the show notes for everyone to kind of see what the rubrics are.

Diana (17m 51s):
Yeah. We can link to the guide to applying for an accredited genealogists credential, which is on, ICAPGEN’s website. And the very end of that, it gives you the rubrics. And actually it is a really good thing to look through. You know, if you’re doing client work, you might want to look through it and think, oh, am I doing all these things? Because that is one of the purposes of accreditation is to prepare you to do really good quality client work,

Nicole (18m 16s):
The same thing with BCG and their rubrics and the standards that anybody could benefit from reading those. So that’s a good idea to check out the accreditation guide and the rubrics.

Diana (18m 27s):
Yeah. It’s all about skill building. And that was what our afternoon on Monday was all about. It was sourced citations and research logs. And Lisa Stokes did these two lessons and just really did a deep dive into how to create source citations, really driving home. The point that I kept, Jen does not have a specific standard. The standard is that you have your own style and that you’re consistent through all of your report and your research log in all the elements you’re using that same consistent style of citation. So that was really helpful for everyone to hear. I think a lot of people get really caught up in trying to adhere to a specific style, but we know there’s a lot of different styles.

Diana (19m 14s):
Each genealogy journal has its own style. And one of our instructors, Jenny Hanson is a Danish researcher. And she explained while she was doing her class that, you know, working with Danish records, you have to develop your own citation format because the records are different than United States records. So I think that’s one of the reasons why I kept gen does not say, well, they have to be in this style because you can accredit in regions all around the world and the records are different.

Nicole (19m 43s):
Yeah, that’s a really interesting, because we talked about that same thing in our class about DNA proof arguments. And we had also a class about certification at the end of the week. And the same point was made that your citations have to be consistent. You have to develop your own house style. And as long as they’re clear, you know, and meet the standards, they don’t have to be one certain way.

Diana (20m 8s):
Right. It’s good to learn by looking at other style guides. I learned by using evidence explained by those official mills, because it’s such a great work to go and read all about, you know, doing a citation for a court record. Perhaps her work really helped me to think through what was needed in a citation, but then after you’ve studied it and you’ve created your own, you can let go of trying to copy her citation format and develop your own. Like you said, that goes with the standards and it’s consistent and clear and actually works. So, you know, it was fun to do the citation class and our syllabus was fun.

Diana (20m 48s):
That was the one section that had color in the syllabus because Lisa does color coding in her citation templates. So I think that was really fun for the attendees to do some of the activities that went with that. So their assignment for that day was to do a basic source citation template and to fine tune their outline or to make sure they had one, if they hadn’t brought one yet, because we would be doing that the next day. So a lot of people had already had a citation template. And so they worked on adding more citations to it and people that did it worked on creating one. And, you know, we use our citation templates all the time in our research, whenever I’m doing a project, I open that template up and use that all the way through my project.

Diana (21m 35s):
So we’re big proponents of the citation template.

Nicole (21m 38s):
Yeah. It’s really nice to have a list of citations you’ve made in the past and to review those when you’re making one, just like it and help you to not have to recreate the whole thing.

Diana (21m 47s):
Yeah. And it was fun to see how people would create their templates. Everybody was a little bit different. Like some people use the square brackets where you were supposed to fill in information. Other people used a slash. So everything in between the slashes would be what you needed to fill in, you know, just different ways to make sure you’re getting everything filled in and the template. I love seeing other ideas. That’s one of my favorite ways to learn. So that was one of the benefits. That’s good. So on Tuesday, first thing in the morning we met every day at eight o’clock mountain time. First thing we did was, did some peer review. So the fun thing about being online was that we could use the zoom breakout rooms and we had those set up to be by region.

Diana (22m 35s):
And so we could really quickly put all the Southern researchers together and all the Great Lakes researchers together. And then they did some peer review of their source citation templates and outline. And I thought that worked really well because it was so fast to go into those zoom rooms and let everybody work. And then Lisa and I had the option to go visit different ones and answer questions. So we could meet with people, you know, in a smaller group setting. And that was great.

Nicole (23m 6s):
Nice

Diana (23m 6s):
That morning was all about evidence analysis and writing an effective research report. And we had our instructor, Jana Greenhalgh, come in and do that for us. Jana is one of our accredited genealogists colleagues and she was the level one testing chair for a couple of years. So she had a lot of experience with looking at hundreds of four generation reports that have been turned into ICAPGEN. So she was able to give some really good advice, answer questions, and I think give everyone a really good sense of what they needed to do to write that four generation report.

Diana (23m 45s):
And it was also skill-building, you know, whether you are preparing a report to turn in or not, it just really good skill building for writing.

Nicole (23m 54s):
Well, I love Jana Greenhalgh. So that’s fun that she got to come in and teach and, and share some of her experience with looking at those board generation reports.

Diana (24m 4s):
Yeah, she, she was able to kind of talk about some of the pitfalls and things that she had seen, where people had tripped up. And so it’s really helpful to know what not to do sometimes as well. The afternoon we had Lisa teaching us all about how to do genealogy proof writing. And she’s developed a really wonderful model for a well-written genealogy proof lesson with a lot of great visuals and had some exercises to help people learn how to organize your research. It’s one thing to do all the research and in your head know how it proves something, but it’s another thing to organize that into writing.

Diana (24m 44s):
And so that is so important in the fourth generation project. Be able to prove in as few words as possible because you only have 40 pages to prove your generations, how everybody connects. So that was a great class. And then I finished off the day with talking about creating a research reference guide, and that was all about preparing the students for level two testing. So we kind of finished up level one and then jumped in a little bit to level two. And then their homework for that day was to write one proof summary or proof argument for the first generation project. So using the lessons on writing to put those into practice, and if they already had one written great, they could work on that.

Diana (25m 30s):
Or they could just write one, if they hadn’t yet written something,

Nicole (25m 34s):
How great that they were actually able to work on their project during the course.

Diana (25m 39s):
Yeah. Because I know when I was writing my fourth generation project, I wasn’t sure if I was doing it right. And so it’s good to write something and get feedback. Yeah. I think that was really valuable.

Nicole (25m 49s):
Well, what did you guys do on Wednesday?

Diana (25m 52s):
Well, first thing in the morning we had peer review again and again, put everybody in their regional breakout rooms. And again, this was good because in the region there are certain record types you should be using first, you know, are the most important record types. And so you’re more familiar with the record types in your regions. So people could review each other’s work and say, oh yeah, that makes sense. That’s good. You know, have you thought about this? So again, regional base, which I think was very helpful. And then that day was all about level two. We had two classes on Wednesday morning by Mindy Taylor and Mindy is another accredited genealogist and she does great lessons on extraction, transcription, abstraction, and translation.

Diana (26m 42s):
So those are some of the things that you need to know how to do. And that’s part of your level two testing. So she really gave us the basics of all of those different parts and did some practice that was fun because she had some documents that at the end of the day where the homework. And so everybody got to practice doing an abstract, doing some transcription. And she also did a class on the document interpretation portion of the testing and gave some examples of what, what that would entail and gave ideas for practicing that.

Diana (27m 22s):
So that was fun to do kind of a shift from writing from the previous days and shift to thinking about regional documents and what you needed to know for the testing for that.

Nicole (27m 34s):
And that’s something really neat about ICAPGEN is that they have these lists of the most important record types for each region. And I think any researcher could learn a lot from that.

Diana (27m 46s):
Yeah. And those are available on the website. You can go to testing regions and look at your area of focus of research. Those are all prepared by accredited genealogists from that region. And because they are different people preparing those, they will differ a little bit, but they can give you great ideas on a specific place that you’re researching. And the types of records you should be looking at first and some methodologies. So that kind of takes us to the afternoon. In the afternoon, we continue to focus on level two. And Jenny Hansen came in and talked about research planning, and that’s a huge part of any researcher.

Diana (28m 27s):
You know, their knowledge base should be how to plan research. But specifically in the testing, you do have research planning and you’re given a document and you have to come up with a research plan that fits for that region. You know, the most logical steps to take. And then also you have to demonstrate your ability to plan research in the level three test. So that was really a fun session. And Jenny is fun and brings a different perspective because she accredited in 1999, I believe. And so, you know, she jokes that that was in the last century, which is true. It sounds kind of funny, but she probably has been working professionally the longest of all of us.

Diana (29m 9s):
And so I was able to get some really great tips and fun perspectives.

Nicole (29m 15s):
Jennie Hanson is, is a very knowledgeable researcher. And when I went to one of her classes at BYU family history conference, she just has such a fun way of teaching. I love her.

Diana (29m 28s):
Yeah. She is very fun, energetic, has great stories, and she knows her stuff. So that was a treat. And then to finish out that day, Lisa talked to us about general knowledge questions. So she was able to give it all the students an idea of what types of things they would be asked. This is a two hour test. And that sounds kind of scary. Doesn’t it? You have no idea what kind of questions you’re going to be asked from your region. You know, if you’re a United States research or you’ve got five or six states, and it could be any kind of questions from any of those states or methodologies or specific repositories.

Diana (30m 9s):
So Lisa did a great job of covering that and how to prepare our homework for that day, but back to Mindy’s class about taking a document and then doing some transcription and abstract. So that was fun to have the homework be something specific tied to the class. And then Lisa also started a document called general knowledge questions, bank or something like that. I can’t think of what it is that the idea was that everyone could go in and put some sample questions. Okay. What kind of questions would I kept on be asking me about my region and started putting in some ideas so people could have like a little practice test.

Diana (30m 51s):
So we have no idea if these are questions that would be on a test, but that was also a fun part of the day.

Nicole (30m 58s):
Nice. So for that homework assignment, did the students have to find their own record to transcribe.

Diana (31m 4s):
We were going to have them do that, but minty brought so many good records. She actually ended up having just some specific things that everybody would do so that when we came back the next morning for a review, you know, she could answer the questions about it.

Nicole (31m 19s):
Oh, that’s cool.

Diana (31m 20s):
We kind of found throughout the week that we would envision something, but then when we were actually doing it, we realized, oh, this will probably work better. You know, it’s kind of the way we are with our site of groups, isn’t it? That we envisioned something, then we try it and we either like it, or we don’t like it. So keep refining.

Nicole (31m 37s):
Yeah. I’m putting it into practice and seeing how it works is usually the best way to see if you want to keep doing it.

Diana (31m 44s):
That’s right. So on Thursday, everybody came back Thursday morning with their transcripts and abstracts and Mindy came and joined us that morning for that little bit and went through the answers and it was fun to see how different people went about the same task. I mean, that’s always fascinating to get ideas from others. So that was great. The rest of that morning, we learned all about the final project. Jenny Hanson came back and taught a lesson about what is expected for the final project and how to prepare. And then I taught a lesson about how the final project will be evaluated using the rubrics. So all morning long, we talked about the final project and I pulled up one of my practice projects that I had done getting ready for accreditation and went through it and let everybody look at it and decide what I could have done better and what I did well, you know, you just do those projects quickly.

Diana (32m 41s):
When I did it, it was only three hours where you were given a problem and had to do the entire project, have a report written. So it was fun to do that. And then we gave everybody their final project tests. Lisa had spent quite some time and coming up with a good question for each region. And so each person got to take a test in their region and we just let them do this at home on their own. You know, he said, okay, just time yourself for four hours. Do you want, whenever you want, just have it done by 8:00 AM, mountain time tomorrow. And so that was really fun for them.

Diana (33m 22s):
It was very eyeopening. And the next morning, when we came back to do peer review, it was so fun to hear their comments. And they were really happy because they did it and they didn’t know they could actually do it. And others was a disaster, but they learned a lot. So I remember feeling that way. So that was one of the things we wanted to do at the Family History Library to have that be a mock test at the library and which is why we kind of pushed to do the course on site in Salt Lake City. Then we just decided, you know, you can get just about as much out of it, just doing it at home. So we just did it. And I think it worked really well.

Nicole (34m 3s):
Yeah. And the fact that you’re going to have peer review on it the next morning makes it so that probably everybody was very motivated to do it.

Diana (34m 10s):
Yeah. And so we did the peer review and we actually gave everybody, I think, 45 minutes, 30 to 45 minutes to really go through. And the great thing is, again, I kept in has got the grading rubric. There’s no surprise about how you will be graded on your level three. And so when you were going through and doing peer review, you could just go right through that rubric and say, well, this met the standard or this did not. I mean, and you know, people obviously knew if they hadn’t met it, but it gave them such a good idea. We had talked a lot about time management, you know, how much time should you spend researching? How much time should you spend writing? How much time should you spend on your research log and your family group sheet and your pedigree chart, you have to turn all of that in and your documents.

Diana (34m 55s):
So it’s not like you just get to write up a quick report. You’ve got to have a complete project turned in. So we also encourage them to write a little something to themselves, a reflection. I should’ve done this and this and this and this. And so I know for me, it’s always helpful to write down while it’s fresh in my mind, how I messed up and how I was going to do better the next time.

Nicole (35m 18s):
I think that’s a really good idea to do anytime we work on a writing project or a client project, you know, like, oh, here’s something that I realized that would have made things easier or just some kind of reflection.

Diana (35m 33s):
Oh, for sure. And it was really fun. I, one of the students actually uploaded that to her folder in Google and I read through it, this is so great. The next time she goes to do a four hour project, she can review this and tighten it up. You know, it was really fun to read her reflection. Not everybody let us see their reflections, but hopefully they all did it. So that was a fun morning. And then one of the things that I had worked on was finding a mentor and a credit genealogist mentor for every student in their region. And they all joined us on sale. And this was another benefit of going virtual because we were able to bring in mentors from all over the country.

Diana (36m 13s):
And that was awesome. We brought in Peggy Lauridsen from back east. I think she’s in Ohio. And we had others from California and Washington and Texas. I mean, how awesome is that, that we could just bring in all these different mentors to meet one-on-one or one-on-two depending on the region or three or four, but with their specific region and talk for a full hour about what you need to know in that region, what are the important repositories? What’s the important methodology, you know, and from their experience from testing and working as professionals in researching in that region. Well, what is, what is the most important?

Diana (36m 54s):
So some of our attendees told us that was their favorite thing of the whole week being able to meet with that mentor.

Nicole (37m 0s):
Oh, what a delightful experience, how neat

Diana (37m 4s):
That was great. Then we had our afternoon was all about the very last part of the testing process, and that is the oral review. And Lisa covered that that’s something else that might be kind of scary, but she was able to explain how it will work. And I think kind of alleviate some of those fears. One of the attendees said, you know, just learning all about this learning, what to expect has taken away so much of the fear of the process, just being able to hear all about it. And we also did a fun ethics activity where Lisa had written up several sticky situations. You might find yourself in as a professional genealogist and we did ad hoc breakout rooms.

Diana (37m 46s):
So just, you know, not by region, just as groups and discuss questions and then came back together in the big group and discuss those. And that was really interesting and fun as well. I think ethics is something we don’t talk a lot about in genealogy and it was really good to discuss those.

Nicole (38m 3s):
What was one of the ethics questions?

Diana (38m 6s):
What do you do if a client comes to you and they’ve had research done by a previous researcher or company or something, and they’re very unhappy with the work product they received, how do you reply to the client? You know, what do you do in that situation? And so our discussion basically ended up with the thought that, well, you don’t throw other researchers under the bus, you respect the profession and you would just kindly say, well, based on this, I’m going to go forward with this rather than saying, oh, that was terrible research, I can do so much better. So, you know, as professional genealogists, we want to always uphold the profession. We don’t know what went into that other report.

Diana (38m 48s):
Maybe the client didn’t give the researcher very much time. Maybe they didn’t give them all the previous research. You know, there’s a lot of things that can go into that. And so you always want to be professional. So that was one example.

Nicole (38m 60s):
Good example, thanks for sharing that.

Diana (39m 2s):
So our very final thing was a panel discussion. And I had invited several accredited genealogists who had worked in the profession for quite a bit and had varied experiences to come in and do a session with this title, how accreditation opens doors. We just really wanted to expose our class to all the different ways you could use your accreditation. And so we had people come in that had worked for professional companies, people who had their own company, people who had worked on the research for television shows, forensic genealogists, who worked for law enforcement or worked for the government, doing repatriation, people who worked for Family Search.

Diana (39m 46s):
It was just really fun. Everyone had a very broad, broad background, and I think just gave our attendees an idea of the opportunities available to them once they have a credential. So that was a fun way to finish up the week.

Nicole (40m 3s):
I bet that was very interesting learning from some of those forensic genealogists and people who have done work. That’s just a little different than the typical researching for clients.

Diana (40m 14s):
It was. And there’s so many opportunities though. One of my main takeaways was that the opportunities for professional genealogists and credential genealogists really is just so broad. And several of them had been in the field for a long time, said they just cannot believe how it has just exploded with opportunities. So I thought that was really great.

Nicole (40m 37s):
Well, thanks for sharing all about this week-long course. What was your favorite part of the course now that we’ve heard everything you did?

Diana (40m 44s):
You know, my favorite part was honestly going into those breakout rooms with just one or two or three other people. And just getting to know our class attendees personally, it was so interesting to see where they were in the process and to see how well they were doing with their research. So I really liked, you know, that personal touch. I love teaching, but for me, it’s always fun to see how our class members are doing.

Nicole (41m 11s):
What would you recommend that those who are seeking accreditation do now because your class is obviously over

Diana (41m 19s):
Go to ICAPGEN and download that guide. I’ve mentioned that a couple times, the guide to applying, right at the beginning, it has a readiness assessment and go through that and see how ready you are. And it’s on page 20. I would read through and think, well, am I interested in doing something like this? And if so, go through, see if you’re getting close to having the experience you need, then you can go to the YouTube channel. We have an ICAPGEN YouTube channel, and we have so many videos all about the process, you know, and watch all the videos, just like, you know, we were teaching everybody in the course, you could kind of do your own course.

Nicole (41m 59s):
Well, great. What about this study groups?

Diana (42m 2s):
Yep. I kept in, has two steady groups. Lisa Stokes has done a fabulous job in getting those all organized and doing the curriculum. There’s a level one study group where you go through one generation of your project and get peer review and learn how to really get that to standards. And then there’s a level two and three study group where you learn the basics of the testing. So they’re kind of like little mini Institute courses that I asked Lisa, what was the difference between the study groups and the course? And she said, we were just able to do so much more in the course to dive deeper on every topic, but the study groups are running and you can find information on those that I kept on website, those run throughout the year.

Diana (42m 46s):
And those are a fabulous way. But you again, want to make sure you are ready. You don’t sign up for those to learn about it. You sign up for those when you are actively engaged in working on accreditation.

Nicole (42m 60s):
Well, thanks for sharing all of those tips. And I hope everybody who’s thinking about getting a credential. We’ll look into accreditation because I think it’s a great option.

Diana (43m 8s):
If I can do it, anybody can do it right. It was a lot of work, but it was great. And I’m so grateful. I did it.

Nicole (43m 17s):
You can do it. All right, everybody. We’ll talk to you guys again next week.

Diana (43m 22s):
All right. Bye bye everyone.

Nicole (43m 23s):
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 books, Research Like a Pro and Research Like a Pro with DNA on Amazon.com and other booksellers. You can also register for our online courses or study groups of the same names. Learn more at FamilyLocket.com/services. To share your progress and ask questions, join our private Facebook group by sending us your book receipt or joining our courses to get updates in your email inbox each Monday, subscribe to our newsletter at FamilyLocket.com/newsletter. Please subscribe, rate and review our podcast. We read each review and are so thankful for them. We hope you’ll start now to Research Like a Pro.