RLP 399: Merging and Separating Identities with Jan Joyce

Nicole (1s):
This is Research Like a Pro episode 399: Merging and Separating Identities with Jan Joyce. 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.

Nicole (41s):
Let’s go. Today’s episode is sponsored by Newspapers.com. Hello everybody, welcome to Research Like a Pro.

Diana (50s):
Hi Nicole. How are you doing today?

Nicole (53s):
I’m doing great and I’ve been having a good time reading everyone in the study group their objectives for the Research Like a Pro with DNA project they’re working on and it’s been interesting. What did you think when you read through them?

Diana (1m 6s):
I agree, lots of different localities. I saw one in Germany, one in, well actually a couple in Ireland, several In the south, like Virginia, one in Chambers County, Alabama, which is one of our localities. So that was fun. Yeah, I love seeing what people are trying to solve with DNA and there was even one that was trying to find an adoptee parent, but you know, back a little bit early 1900s. So everybody’s working on something different and interesting and that’s the fun of the study group. You work on your own project and you have other people help you and look at your work and see if they can give you some feedback and you make progress. So it’s awesome to be up and up and running with that.

Nicole (1m 49s):
Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised to see that at least two people are actually using DNA evidence to help with an identity objective and trying to figure out who, which of these men of the same name is the parent of this person living in the same location. So that was really neat. Usually everyone has a relationship objective.

Diana (2m 11s):
Oh, that’s nice. One of the Irish projects was actually using DNA to try to find just a location to search in Ireland, which is what we’ve done a lot with our client work because once you find the location then you can go to work searching really specifically in that area. So that was a fun one to see as well.

Nicole (2m 30s):
Yeah.

Diana (2m 30s):
All right. Let’s do some announcements. Our next Research Like a Pro webinar offering will be in March on the 21st, that’s a Saturday, at 11:00 AM Mountain and this will be by Heidi Mathis and her title is Adopted Grandfather’s Biological Parents Were Also Adopted: Using atDNA and Y-DNA to Answer Family Mysteries. So this client’s grandfather was abandoned on his adoptive parents’ front porch in 1939 at age six. Which family stories were true? Was he Polish and abandoned by immigrants? Was he related to his putative biological parents Roberta Overstreet and Robert A.

Diana (3m 13s):
Bach? The client and her uncle’s DNA tests provided the clues needed to point the documentary research in the right direction to answer these family mysteries. Our presenter, Heidi, is a graduate of the Research Like a Pro DNA and Research Like a Pro study groups and a researcher at FamilyLocket Genealogists and we are very grateful to have her. She’s an amazing researcher. Our next Research Like a Pro study group, begins August, 2026 and our peer group leader application is on our website. So we’d love to have you apply if you are interested. And then as always, join our newsletter that comes out each Monday to see new blog posts, new podcasts, any of our upcoming lectures and other fun things we have to offer.

Diana (3m 59s):
We are very excited because RootsTech is this week, March 5th through 7th at the Salt Palace downtown Salt Lake City, and we are so excited to see many of you. So be sure you stop by our Family Locket booth or come to one of our lectures and say hi.

Nicole (4m 15s):
Yes, say hi. We love saying hi to everyone we see at RootsTech. Well, we are really excited to have Jan Joyce here with us on the podcast today. Hi Jan.

Jan Joyce (4m 26s):
Hello Diana and Nicole. I’m so excited to be talking about Merging and Separating Identities. It’s one of my genealogy obsessions, but before we do that, I heard you say this is your 399th episode. Congratulations!

Diana (4m 39s):
Thanks.

Jan Joyce (4m 40s):
Looking back, do you have any highlights or favorite memories to share? How about some bloopers, anything you can tell us?

Nicole (4m 45s):
Well, I do remember that the first time we recorded we had to keep starting over because we have messing up or thinking that we messed up or giggling. And so we just, I think we restarted several times.

Diana (4m 59s):
Well, and then, I don’t know if it’s really a blooper, but a major snafu was when we had tried to get ahead and we were being so efficient, had recorded like five episodes ahead, and then we found out that the platform we used to record did not get any of my tracks. And I had to go back through, listen to the podcast and then try to respond appropriately. It was just such a nightmare, but I did it. That’s, I was just so mad.

Jan Joyce (5m 30s):
No, that sounds horrible ’cause you’re trying to remember how you answered it well, the first time.

Diana (5m 34s):
Yeah, exactly. So that sticks out in my mind as one of the challenging things, but you know, it’s been such a fun journey and yeah, now we don’t, we don’t stress so much about saying things wrong. We know everybody out there is forgiving.

Jan Joyce (5m 48s):
Well, we, we, we all thank you, the community thanks you because I, I know, I know I’ve told you you guys this before, but I love listening to them and I especially do that when I’m driving long distances. I’ll, I’ll queue up one or two episodes And I often go back to the same one to remind myself of, of things I want to employ in my research.

Nicole (6m 5s):
That’s so fun. Thank you for listening. And I will say that our next episode we’re going to have a whole bunch of fun things to talk about for our 400th episode, going back and, and kinda sharing some stats and some listener comments who’ve been with us for a lot of years. So that episode will be fun to listen to

Jan Joyce (6m 27s):
Excellent. Fun, super fun.

Nicole (6m 28s):
and reminisce.

Jan Joyce (6m 29s):
I love it.

Nicole (6m 30s):
Well, before we talk about Merging and Separating Identities and the fabulous course that Jan is coordinating, let’s read Jan’s bio so that all of you can get to know her. a. Jan Joyce is a board-certified genealogist whose journey began in 1998 while managing the marketing initiatives at Genealogy.com.

Nicole (7m 13s):
Her personal research delves into ancestral roots across Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, tracing lineages back to England, Germany, Ireland, and Norway. She holds the CG and CGL certifications from the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG) and the AG accreditation from ICAPGen. Specializing in research methodology, Jan divides her time between personal research, writing, and education. She developed the comprehensive “Assemblage” course for the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (SLIG), which guides students through preparing, writing, and revising case studies and includes Artificial Intelligence.

Nicole (8m 2s):
Her innovative Document Work Workshop helps aspiring genealogists prepare for BCG certification. And she pioneered the new institute course “Merging & Separating Identities: Strategies and Tactics to Solve” to advance the field’s research strategies and tactics. So with that, let’s learn more about the Merging and Separating course. So this course is designed for Genealogists ready to master the art of identity resolution, Merging and Separating provides hands-on strategies for tackling complex cases. This virtual institute course features engaging instruction, real world case studies and practical exercises where participants learn to apply and analytical tools, mapping and FAN club techniques under the guidance of course coordinator Jan Joyce. The course costs $550 to register. So Jan, tell us when the course starts and how often does it meet?

Jan Joyce (8m 25s):
Awesome. We’ll meet on Thursdays beginning April 30th and it goes through June 11th. So it’s seven weeks of classes, which is really a full institute course with 20 fabulous sessions. Can you tell I’m biased? And we’ll meet from 9:00 AM to 2:30 PM Mountain time.

Nicole (8m 43s):
Well, that’s gonna be great. And the weekly format is going to give everyone lots of time to digest everything they’re learning.

Jan Joyce (8m 49s):
I think so, that’s why we’ve changed it this year. We’ll talk about that a little bit more.

Diana (8m 53s):
Well, I know for one, I’m excited to go through this because this happens to everybody having identities that are merged or just difficult to, to tease out. So what is the most common mistake people make with a same name problem?

Jan Joyce (9m 9s):
Hmm. Well, there’s several, but I think maybe the, the starting point of that is we might not even realize we have one. So I’m gonna use this example throughout our conversation today for Henry Dewitt, and Henry Dewitt is a person who we use in this course in the common data set. So we might have several, records for Henry dewitt In the same geographic area over the same time period. And we assume, or let’s just say I assume it’s one person and I start building that family tree. But then things stop making sense, you know, my timeline was off, the children’s names are off, birth dates don’t fit patterns, or there’s a wife name that appears and disappears. So instead of stepping back and questioning maybe some initial assumptions, we might try to force the puzzle pieces together.

Jan Joyce (9m 56s):
So by the time we realize that we might have two or three Henry Dewitts, like I did, merged into one, and then it really becomes difficult to unravel.

Diana (10m 6s):
Oh, I think this feels very familiar to anybody who’s done genealogy. So this will be great. And I love that you’ve got this common data set of this Henry Dewitt to explore. That is going to be very fun.

Jan Joyce (10m 19s):
I think so. It’s, it’s great.

Nicole (10m 22s):
Okay, Jan, well tell us, why is Merging and Separating Identities suddenly getting so much attention in genealogy?

Jan Joyce (10m 29s):
Well, I wouldn’t say it’s sudden, Nicole, we’ve had margin separating case challenges for decades. But what is accelerating is our resolution of these cases. And that’s just fascinating. First of all, we have more records digitized than ever before, which means we’re finding more instances of our ancestors appearing in different places, often with slightly or significantly different names. I do remember back when I started genealogy research, I forget who said this, but someone said, if you think about the, the records that are available to us online, it’s like an iceberg tip. In other words, we see that there’s this, this little tip above the water and we think, you know, that’s all that’s there. So I think, you know, that waterline is receding and the tip is expanding as we have so many more available now, which is fantastic for all of us because traveling is difficult.

Jan Joyce (11m 19s):
Secondly, DNA’s testing has exploded. So when people get unexpected DNA matches, you know, we often discover we’ve been working on the wrong person entirely or we’ve merged two people into one. And then the third reason that merging and separating cases are getting more attention now is that AI tools are making it easier as we search across massive databases. That’s fantastic. Yet they’re also creating confusion when some algorithms might suggest connections that may be or may, may not be correct. So the real issue is that many of us have not been taught systematic methods to tackle these cases. We might be winging it and that leads to us building our own brick walls and we could have avoided it.

Nicole (11m 59s):
Agreed. And I think you’re so right about the algorithm suggesting these connections. I just think of all the Ancestry hints that are for somebody who lives in a completely different continent and it’s obviously for a different person. So if we’re not careful, we can easily add incorrect information.

Jan Joyce (12m 19s):
Definitely.

Nicole (12m 20s):
Well, for the sake of our discussion today, let’s shorten calling these types of cases from merging and separating identity cases to M/S cases. So do you remember your first M/S case?

Jan Joyce (12m 30s):
Oh, I do, I do. I personally became fascinated with merging and separating identity cases when I solved the case and subsequently published it in 2017. This case was not the more typical case of too many Henry Dewitts, but of one woman with the same name, Susan Gliddon, who appeared in England and Canada and then in Ohio with a new married name. I had to prove it was one woman. And I’m happy to say that I did. Since then, I’ve been slightly obsessed with a topic of M/S cases. Thus that case is what began the idea of this course and started creating the material.

Nicole (13m 4s):
Oh, that’s so fun. I think that we all have done that. I mean, taking a person who migrates from one place to the next and trying to say that’s all the same person. At least that’s super common for the research I’ve done in the south, in the southern states, because people don’t usually stay in the same place starting in the 1800s and as the west expanded in the United States, people just moved west, in my family. So

Jan Joyce (13m 31s):
I love that. And that makes the timeline so important, right, as we’re proving the locations that they’re in and not in. So the negative evidence becomes much more obvious when we’ve created those timelines and seeing that they really weren’t in some place before they were, and vice versa.

Diana (13m 47s):
Well, I think the example of a woman is important because as we know, a woman could have many different names once she, you know, if she marries multiple husbands and trying to prove her identity is another one of our big challenges as researchers. So I love that you’re including that in this umbrella of cases. So can you give us a specific example where someone in your course discovered they’d been researching the wrong person for years?

Jan Joyce (14m 14s):
Oh yes. That’s a great question. And it’s, it’s interesting when during the course those aha moments occur and people say, ah, you know what I found last night? So they’re both like heartbreaking, yet exhilarating because then they’ve, they’ve turned a corner, right? So one student was working on her third great grandfather, I’ll call him William Thompson, for over five years. He was born in Virginia, migrated to Ohio, married and had children. Normal life story for us, right? But during the course when we worked through the identity dossier building process, she started to systematically record every descriptor into her spreadsheet from every source. And that’s when she noticed an occupation discrepancy.

Jan Joyce (14m 55s):
Her William was listed as a farmer in 1850, but then a blacksmith in 1860. Now, that might not be a, a atypical progression, but she dug deeper, used the timelines and discovered there were two Williams in the same township, born within a few years of each other, and she’d been mixing their records for, you know, years, right? So the beautiful part was once that she separated them, she found her actual ancestor and using the methodologies we teach, and her William had actually moved on to Illinois and not stayed in Ohio. An example of my own case, let me talk about this Henry Dewitt a little bit more. What led me astray for so many years is there’s this beautiful image of a loose leaf bible page online.

Jan Joyce (15m 38s):
It has the full names of seven children and their birth dates on it. So, and the last names of all these children was Dewitt. So the handwriting appears appropriate for those birth years of 1774 through 1797, though it all appears to be written at one time. Now get this, overtyped on the page it says “said to be the children of Henry Dewitt and Sarah Elizabeth Friend…” Okay, those are my people. I know you already get it, that was typed on the page. But I’ve been taking that information as accurate for years. So using the methods in this course, I’ve disproven that and it was a combination of using so many of our course techniques such as timelines, identity, dossiers and spreadsheets, AI and offline methods that broke it open for me.

Jan Joyce (16m 27s):
So those assumptions we make once and forget later why or what source it came from can really make a difference. And in this case, it was a source with information that surely was accurate, but not for my Henry Dewitt family.

Nicole (16m 42s):
Just the wrong family, and that’s so frustrating when somebody types onto an original source, they put something wrong on there. Just wish you knew who did that.

Jan Joyce (16m 51s):
I do. And that person is no longer on that forum, let’s say. I tried, I tried tracking him down.

Nicole (16m 56s):
Oh, and they had the best intentions I’m sure. But it is, it is difficult when something like that has been misleading researchers for years.

Jan Joyce (17m 8s):
Agreed. And it is just populated so many different online trees, as you can imagine.

Nicole (17m 13s):
Oh yes. Well, what happens to people’s research when they don’t address these identity problems?

Jan Joyce (17m 19s):
Well that’s a, that’s a good segue, isn’t it? As you just heard, you know, it gets, gets replicated over and over. It corrupts so many li lines in a family tree, and then that just goes down generation by generation, right? So it’s not just about that one person, it’s about their descendants, their siblings and their in-laws. And the really concerning part is that with the online family trees and DNA matching, these errors can multiply. So if someone copies a wrong tree, then someone else copies that tree and suddenly there are hundreds of trees online with the same mistake, just like that Henry Dewitt Bible page. And of course the more we see something, the more we think it’s right, you know?

Jan Joyce (17m 60s):
So this course addresses it head-on by teaching us how not to solve our cases, but then also how to document it so others can understand your reasoning and hopefully avoid that same confusion.

Nicole (18m 10s):
Yes, it’s gonna be so exciting to have so many people in the course learning how to solve their own case and document it.

Diana (18m 18s):
Well, I am very interested in all of the different documents and the methods we’re going to use And I’m sure we’ll get to that. But what should someone do right now if they suspect they have emerging or separating identity problem in their own research?

Jan Joyce (18m 34s):
Well, first of all, that’s a great sign that they have that suspicion. I love that. And my first answer was, is it okay for me to say like, come join us at our course? Like of course, that’s what I’m gonna say. But seriously then, you know, stop adding information to that part of your tree. Don’t magnify the problem. So back up and gather every source you have for that individual and create a spreadsheet or a list. Like I use a spreadsheet as my research log now based on these methods that we teach. And so I just almost start over because I know something’s wrong. And then, you know, ask yourself, am I a hundred percent sure, you know, this source is about that same person as the others?

Jan Joyce (19m 15s):
If I can’t say yes, I probably have that identity, identity issue. I loved in your introduction when you told us that one of your study group folks was using DNA for an identity case, that was, that’s fantastic, right? That’s, that ties right into what we’re doing. Most of our cases are about same name individuals. You know, I mentioned that Susan Gliddon, which was not, was the same name in different places, but we often have same name individuals in one place. And that one of the problems is we might have too many records of that individual, plus his or her family, plus all of the FAN clubs. So that was my case with this Henry Dewitt problem.

Jan Joyce (19m 55s):
I literally have 950 records in my spreadsheet for answering one research question, and I couldn’t do that over the last 10 years. But by slowing down and analyzing, then recording every descriptor from every record, that exercise alone often illuminates our problem. And then our solution last year, some of the students told our instructor team over and over how overwhelmed they were with creating an organizational system to support this type of case. So that became, I didn’t go into the, the course thinking that was a major problem, but we just heard it so many times as they almost had given up because they just didn’t know what to do next, they had too much information.

Jan Joyce (20m 38s):
So that’s why we simplify it. We take it step by step in the course with tools along the way. I wanna emphasize that like tools are really important and that’s what we, we give to the students. And Nicole and I like to laugh, but we kind of geek out on our spreadsheets. We love them. When we both show them in-depth. So in last year’s course, our students were so energized by Nicole’s sessions on spreadsheets and specifically Airtable that many of them wanted to form groups afterwards to work together. I have to share, the funny part of that is that I do like to have fun in my courses and unrelated to this Airtable post-course meeting group idea, someone used the term abutter as a neighbor, like you’re, you know, you’re contiguous to them.

Jan Joyce (21m 24s):
So abutter. And I just thought that was so funny. So, and that became a running joke in the class day after day. So after everyone decided they wanted to create small groups and meet on Airtable, we decided we were gonna call them the Airtable Abutters group. So that was fun. But also you can see how inspired folks were by this course, but in specific Nicole’s sessions.

Diana (21m 47s):
Oh yeah, Airtable is amazing. And I can see how if it, it has been adapted for something very specific like this, it would be a huge, huge step forward in this type of a, a project. So how exciting that Nicole’s going to teach, and share of course, I’m sure the template that she created for it.

Jan Joyce (22m 9s):
Yeah. And this, this year. And Thank you for saying that Diana, because Nicole’s session was so powerful, we’re expanding it and making it two, so people will have more time with it, we’ll have more time to kinda like sample it in a way and learn more about it. So I’m, I’m really proud to make that change and offer that to everybody.

Nicole (22m 29s):
I’m excited too. I think it’s so fun to think of the ways we can use our tools like spreadsheets and Airtable to see our data in new ways that help us solve the problem. So it’s just really, really fun. Well how common is it for genealogists to have emerging and separating identity problem? Is it just, you know, a few, a few genealogists who have this?

Jan Joyce (22m 51s):
You know, I think that if any genealogist answered, I’ve never had one, or I don’t currently have one, I think they don’t know what they don’t know, right? Because it’s not rare, it’s, we, we might think it’s only the case of the John Smiths, but it’s not. I’ve already mentioned, you know, Henry Dewitt, I’ve mentioned Susan Gliddon and those aren’t, you know, highly common names. So in reality, almost every genealogist encounters these problems, not once, not twice, but multiple times. So recognizing them becomes really important. So we’ve all seen identity confusion with unusual surnames and in small towns and in well-documented families, but it’s just in anywhere.

Jan Joyce (23m 33s):
So I mentioned Henry Dewitt already. Some of the records about him are used in our common dataset, which we’ll talk about in a few minutes. In this particular case, I had men with a last name Dewitt and five of them were Barney Dewitts, four Henry Dewitts, two Pauls, two Davids, two Johns, two Peters and two Williams. So any of those, I don dunno if I did the math right, but 17 men ish could have been either his father, brothers, or cousins. And so I had to, and did use, literally every technique from the course last year to resolve this case. And super happy to say that I did. And it’s also currently under review to be published in a journal.

Nicole (24m 9s):
Woo hoo.

Jan Joyce (24m 10s):
I know, right? But so I think we mentioned a couple of these already, but the way that the instructors and I think about M/S cases is in three categories and the first category is same name and same location. So I think that’s really important to distinguish it, same name but also same location, meaning we’re like in the same general region, you know, like it might be a county, might be a few counties together. Again, I have the four men named Henry Dewitt, not even the John Smith scenario, and they all have strong connections to one township in Maryland and Ohio. Nicole, can you guess what the second category is?

Nicole (24m 47s):
Let me see. Is it same name, different location?

Jan Joyce (24m 51s):
Yeah, it is, right. So this is what we, like we talked about already where we have one person moving, right? It could be an immigrant, it could be just migration within a country. So we can’t tell if it’s the same person with the same name in different locations. So in Susan Gliddon’s case, she didn’t change her name except when she married, but she was in three drastically different locations. So the timelines, the negative evidence became crucial in resolving it and then proving that she was in one geographic area, she was not in another. And in the third type of case is a different name. And to me the location doesn’t matter. It could be In the same location or it could be in different geographic locations.

Jan Joyce (25m 32s):
So this category has some fun examples. Diana and Nicole, can you think of any scenarios that fall into this category?

Nicole (25m 41s):
Well, we’ve already mentioned this one, but women getting married and taking on a new surname.

Jan Joyce (25m 48s):
Definitely.

Diana (25m 48s):
And I have got my Polly Cessna who went by either Mary or Polly and sometimes in the very same document, and she was first a Baker and then she marries and becomes a Cessna, then she becomes a Royston and then she divorces Mr. Royston and goes back to Cessna.

Jan Joyce (26m 4s):
Oh, lovely.

Diana (26m 5s):
Trying to decide, you know, trying to put together the evidence that this is the same person was tricky. But yeah, it’s,

Jan Joyce (26m 13s):
And reverting to a name is fairly unusual too, so yeah. That’s great you found that

Diana (26m 18s):
Early 1800s in Georgia.

Jan Joyce (26m 19s):
Wow,

Diana (26m 20s):
So interesting.

Jan Joyce (26m 22s):
Totally. Can you guys think of any other examples of, you know, a name changes and why?

Nicole (26m 28s):
Well, I’m thinking about those immigrants who maybe come to the United States and their name gets a little bit changed or anglicized or simplified.

Jan Joyce (26m 38s):
I agree. And we might think that, oh, Ellis Island changed it. I think that’s been basically proven wrong. But some form of Anglicization happens, you know, either because they want it to, or someone around them, it’s easier for them, right from, from a phonetic standpoint.

Diana (26m 52s):
Right. Well we talked on the podcast several episodes ago with one of our researchers who had a criminal case about a couple of Johnson brothers who completely changed their names because they had been involved in a case in the Texas in the 1800s and tried to change their identities. But you know, it was teased out that these were the same people.

Jan Joyce (27m 16s):
Awesome. I love, and those are like the most fun ones to talk about. We see them published in journals often, but it’s when like the criminals create aliases, you know, and they’re like running from the law. Like I’m, I’m like waiting to find one of those in my family, but nothing yet. I’m well known for having a bunch of boring farmers, but someday someone’s gonna come out of the woodwork as a criminal, I’m sure of it.

Diana (27m 37s):
We kind of have a criminal, we have our uncle Dick Shults, who shot a man in Oklahoma and then escaped to Arizona territory in the early 1900s. And he was always in the census with his family as William, but then he starts using Dick, and he was in family stories, I’m like, is this even the same person? So yeah, that was a kind of a tricky one. Don’t know why the names changed.

Jan Joyce (28m 1s):
So he changed his, or just started using a different first name, but kept, yeah, kept his same surname. Okay.

Diana (28m 6s):
Yeah. But it didn’t make any sense why didn’t

Jan Joyce (28m 8s):
Make any sense. Yeah, yeah.

Diana (28m 9s):
We, we couldn’t figure out why that name, but you never know how people get started being called something, you know, I have sure we all have nieces or nephews or children where they, we start calling ’em by a really weird nickname and it sticks.

Jan Joyce (28m 25s):
Yeah, I agreed. And like that kind of segues into like maybe the last example I can think of in this category, which is like social acceptance and potentially like immersion into a new culture. So if something would, would work better for us as we are trying to assimilate, I think that could be another reason for slight or significant name changes.

Nicole (28m 44s):
That’s so true. And you just never know why someone might change their name. I remember a practicum case that I was doing where someone had changed their names and there were some things in the newspaper that gave some hints about why the name change might have been necessary, but there wasn’t really an obvious, like this was the reason, but we just kind of had some possible reasons and then he moved and changed his name and took on a new identity and it was still kind of a mystery. But it is interesting to see that happen and, and we don’t always know exactly why.

Jan Joyce (29m 16s):
I remember in one of my cases looking up the law for what it would take to change a name, and I did find it, but, and I, I, I found it might have been like Judy Russell’s blog or something, you know, a legal blog that even though the law existed, if someone changed their name, it was, you know, very few people complied with the law that you could just change it because we don’t have, you know, they didn’t have nearly the technology tracking them like we do today. So you could just move, change your name,

Nicole (29m 43s):
Right? Just show up in a new place and hey. Alright, well that was kind of fun to talk about those. Well, let’s have a quick word from our sponsor. Are you ready to take your family history research beyond names and dates? If so, Newspapers.com is a game changer for genealogists of all levels. With access to over a billion pages of historical newspapers, you can uncover rich untold stories about your ancestors that you won’t find anywhere else. Imagine discovering a detailed obituary that reveals the extended family, or a local news story that highlights your great-grandmother’s role in the community. Maybe you’ll come across a photo capturing a moment in your ancestors’ life, something that brings their story vividly to life.

Nicole (30m 26s):
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Nicole (31m 11s):
So first of all, what kind of experience and expertise is needed to register for the Merging and Separating Identities course?

Jan Joyce (31m 18s):
Oh, that’s a good question. I’m gonna preface it with my experience as a instructor in both as a marketing professor and as in teaching now genealogy materials. And I can tell you that I created a lot of new, new courses when I was a marketing professor and every time I created a new course, I mean I’m super energized, I love it and I go into it thinking this is like great material. After I teach something, the first time I realized, ooh, I have some changes to make. So maybe I got that 60 or 70% right? But that second time is really a sweet spot and subsequent courses because then I’ve been able to change it and update it. And that’s, I’m leading, I’m saying that because it’s led me to this first comment in answering your question, Nicole, about what kind of experience and expertise is needed.

Jan Joyce (32m 5s):
So we’re more strongly saying this year that we’d love for to have students come in with experience with a spreadsheet program. I don’t think I probably emphasized that enough last year. It doesn’t mean you need to be an expert, it doesn’t mean you need to know all the tricks, but just having worked with a spreadsheet program is pretty important because that’s what the common data set is based on. And it, we are completely agnostic about which one, you know, we talk about Excel and Airtable and Google Sheets, those all work great and each one of them has enough features to do what is needed in this course. So we feel like for a student to maximize the course, knowing one of those, the basics even, is just important.

Jan Joyce (32m 47s):
Last year we had a few students who had less experience with a spreadsheet and they did tell us that they still learned a lot, but it would’ve been better coming in with that knowledge. So they all realized the importance of it after, you know, they saw what could be resolved with them. And so they left the course knowing that they were gonna learn more about spreadsheets. That I would say is the, the most important thing. Other than that it doesn’t matter, like education experience level varied quite a bit. Last year, if I remember right, we had five or six or seven Certified Genealogists and Accredited Genealogists and then we had people who were fairly new to genealogy research.

Jan Joyce (33m 27s):
So any level can have their toolkit expanded as well as their knowledge from the course. In terms of preparation, there’s two things. One is the common dataset we’ll talk about in a minute and the other thing is optional, but if you come into the course with your own unresolved merging and separating case, that would be ideal because then you can work through it week by week applying these techniques and evolve it and hopefully resolve it by the end of the course or shortly thereafter. It’s not required, but if you have one in mind, that is fantastic and if you don’t, you could work the common data set in the same way.

Nicole (34m 8s):
I love that. I think that’s so important to think about what case you might bring to the course and how it can advance your knowledge of how to solve the case as you think about it and practice with that case. And I was just thinking to myself if, what case do I have that I could use? And I immediately thought of William Keaton, who I’ve researched a lot about his married life where he lived in Pendleton District, South Carolina, but prior to that a lot of people suspect he was part of the Revolutionary War, but there were multiple men of that name. So it’s always been kind of a project I’ve had on the back burner to resolve that. And it would be really interesting to find out, you know, if my William Keaton was in the war and if he served and where from and all that.

Nicole (34m 56s):
So that’s the one I thought of immediately.

Jan Joyce (34m 58s):
I love that. And now that you’ve said it publicly, we might have to hold you to that, you know what I’m saying?

Diana (35m 5s):
Well, yes, if we go far enough back on your tree, you’re going to find somebody you haven’t researched and those are prime suspects because like you said, John Dan, with all the merging of trees and people just putting records in willy-nilly, you have no idea if any of it’s correct. So anything like that. But we’ve got, I’ve got my John C. Cline that I’m trying to figure out the next step and there are so many John Clines and yeah, there’s, there’s one in particular that’s been merged and I can look at it and say, that’s definitely not the right one. But yeah, he might be, he might be one to tackle. That would be fun.

Jan Joyce (35m 41s):
Alright. You might get, you guys might have to have a little competition between the two of you, you know, to see what happens.

Diana (35m 47s):
Alright, well good idea. Yeah, So I would love to know a little bit more about the guest instructors. I know about this one called Nicole Dyer, but…

Jan Joyce (35m 55s):
Do you know, you’ve heard of her?

Diana (35m 59s):
Can you tell us more about them? And I’m sure you pick them very carefully for their experience.

Jan Joyce (36m 5s):
and yeah, and I wouldn’t even call them guests, like this, they’re the reason this course exists, right? And I, I can’t rave about them enough. Like as a little background, you know, I, I’m proud to share that I work really hard at identifying like the needs in the course and, and my own holes in experience or expertise. So that others can bring that each of these instructors brings a really unique set of experiences and approach, which results in expertise in an area. And it’s just invaluable because there’s, there’s no single right way to solve one of these cases. So let me tell you about each one of them.

Jan Joyce (36m 46s):
So Lynn Nelson brings a published same name case study to the course. So students will be able to read that ahead of time if they want or after and have Lynn share how she resolved it. Kristen Britanik will teach about artificial intelligence. Hers, I have to say was probably one of the most mind-boggling sessions for our students because we came to the course with a really varied set of experience, expertise, and mindset on AI and Kristen makes it quite approachable, and easy for us all to try, or if we’re more advanced to, you know, to grow our skills on it.

Jan Joyce (37m 35s):
And I have to tell you, I still go by Kristen’s mantras or if there’s something I’m doing in my research that’s, you know, slow and repetitive and just driving me crazy, then AI can usually help. And she goes obviously far beyond that. So I’ve expanded her from one to two sessions because people really wanted to get their hands on kind of workshop time to test this. Kim Richardson kind of goes to the opposite end of the spectrum. So while Kristen is on cutting edge high tech AI material, Kim goes the opposite. She goes offline, all right, using physical materials, tangible materials, things we can touch, like sticky notes, index cards, visual sorting.

Jan Joyce (38m 19s):
And this really appeals to all kinds of learners, but especially kinesthetic ones. I’ve had people tell me that Kim’s methods like hon, honestly it’s gonna make me almost tear up, changed their entire research process because they didn’t learn like everybody else and then they didn’t, didn’t know what to do until Kim provided this. So that’s very effective. Patti Hobbs, who is a DNA expert, will bring the DNA perspective and shows us how genetic evidence can confirm or contradict traditional documentary research. And Nicole, I wasn’t saving you for last on purpose, but Nicole, who is an expert in many things and could talk on most of these subjects in this entire course, she is specifically targeting spreadsheet mastery, which we’ve obviously emphasized so far and it was also so powerful.

Jan Joyce (39m 11s):
That’s why after the course, everyone wanted to stay together and keep working on Airtable and there were so many aha moments from Nicole sharing what she does, how she does it, and how to use spreadsheets. That is, I mean, we were all just completely inspired. So this team is just fantastic.

Nicole (39m 32s):
Well you’re so nice to say those things and we can’t leave you off the instructor list because the course wouldn’t exist without you and it was your idea and you did so much research to study all of the cases that exist in like the NGSQ and other places to understand all the different aspects of merging and separating cases and then compiling a giant case study for everyone to use as the common dataset. So we have to include some kind words about you here.

Jan Joyce (40m 1s):
Thank you. Thank you.

Nicole (40m 1s):
’cause they’re all true.

Jan Joyce (40m 3s):
Well, I think one of the things for me that is important, as a student when I take other courses, is like course cohesion, I guess I would call it. Like some institute courses feel to me like they’re, like a series of webinars just kind of strung together, you know what I mean? Like plop this one in, plop that one in and, and that’s not our approach. Like we all work together ahead of time, share materials and except for the case studies, each instructor uses and references the common data set. So that’s woven into the course. So as one instructor is demonstrating a technique, she is not now showing you a whole new example, right? Where you have to learn the geography, the names, whatever.

Jan Joyce (40m 46s):
So everyone’s using this common data set. So all, all the students have to focus on is the technique. Not trying to figure out again like, oh, who’s Marvin Jones? Like whatever, right? So the instructors work hard and that comes across to people. Additionally, in my opinion, they go above and beyond and they’ve been known to help students, you know, like a one-on-one basis, someone who’s stuck on something or wants a little bit of additional insight. So I’m, I’m really proud of that group and just the effect that they’ve had on folks.

Diana (41m 14s):
Well I am excited to learn from all those, and those are some new names for me. So I am always interested to see how other people solve problems. And I think that’s one of the values of this course is getting some new ideas. We can get stuck in our methods and the way we look at things. It’s always valuable to get a new approach, a new perspective. And it might just be what we need to get going on our research again that maybe we’ve given up on.

Jan Joyce (41m 42s):
Exactly. And I think, you know, coming into this course with an open mind and willingness to try something new, even if it feels uncomfortable, it’s not what you like, those are those aha moments I treasure because, honestly people do kind of come in and go, oh, I’m not gonna try AI or I’m not gonna try sticky notes or I’m not gonna try this. And then, you know, we’re like, we strongly encourage ’em to do so and they’ll come back a little sheepish the next time we meet and say, I tried it and it was fantastic. I’m like, uh huh! You know, right. So

Diana (42m 12s):
I love that. That’s so fun.

Nicole (42m 14s):
Well, let’s talk for a little bit more about the common data set. Why is this so important to work with the same, with the same case data?

Jan Joyce (42m 22s):
Yeah, thank you for asking that. I know we’ve, we’ve mentioned it multiple times without telling anybody what it is. So let me just define it first. It’s, it’s a group of records that I provide to students ahead of time. And I haven’t come up with a better name yet, but I’m open to renaming it. I’m just calling it the common data set. So it’s, it’s about Henry Dewitt and so I’m giving out, I forget the number, but let’s say 40 records on Henry Dewitt and his family and maybe some of his FAN club. And then asking students to apply their own techniques to that data set ahead of time. So we’re, we’re not giving instructions. I that sounds very strange, right?

Jan Joyce (43m 3s):
But what we want each student to do is using their own system that they’re comfortable with, kind of like go through the records, maybe they wanna create a research log that’s most typically what people did last year. So they created a research log and the format of the research log does not matter to kind of become familiar with the data and to begin thinking about how they would merge and separate the Henrys that are in the case. So we are asking people to spend time on it ahead of the course, but doing so becomes really important because then you kind of fly through each of the sessions in which we use it. We’re looking at the same Henry Dewitt, but we can follow along with the instructors.

Jan Joyce (43m 46s):
So then as we go through the course, you can take that technique that we demonstrated during a session on the common dataset, but then you apply it to your case. So you’re learning with shared data, but then practicing with your own research. So students who do that pre-course work with a common dataset really will get more out of every session because they already understand the basic facts of the case and they’re not trying to absorb new information. Some of the students, I think if you checkout the video testimonials, you’ll see this, and I, that’s linked on our course page, I think Nicole, but let’s, we can put it In the show notes as well where the students told us they think we should tell everybody it’s mandatory to work on it ahead of time.

Jan Joyce (44m 27s):
I’m like, I can’t really tell anybody that. But it changed their learning so dramatically.

Nicole (44m 32s):
Yes. And I think just getting familiar with the records is helpful and then thinking about how you might apply techniques that you have learned over the years is such a good preparatory thing to do because then it’s on your mind when you hear Jan’s method and Lynn’s method, You know, all the different methods people are sharing. You’ve just tried doing something like that and you can see oh yeah. And it will click so much more to think about what needs to be done in these situations.

Jan Joyce (45m 4s):
Exactly.

Diana (45m 4s):
And I’m so impressed that you put together the work to do that common data set because that is a lot of work preparing that.

Jan Joyce (45m 11s):
Well, and you know what, I pulled it so it’s like, let’s just say it’s 40 records ish, right? And I pulled it from those like eight or 900 that I told you about, and had to just really work on it to make sure that those would end up, you know, being effective in terms of making it manageable for pre-course work, but also for our examples during the course, and that seemed to work well. So I didn’t get any constructive feedback on that, so to say

Diana (45m 34s):
You didn’t have anybody say, this was terrible. I just hated this case. I felt like that with some other cases I’ve done in other practicums. Like, oh, this was just ridiculous. Anyway, that’s ’cause you didn’t get, get negative feedback.

Jan Joyce (45m 48s):
And I, and I’m open especially, you know, and I tell people the first time I teach a course I’m like, look, you guys are our Guinea pigs and we’re, we’re here to make the course better. So I really do take feedback quite seriously And I, you know, I have made changes from it, so I, I want to always improve.

Diana (46m 5s):
Oh yeah, we, every time we do one of our courses, we always look at the feedback and improve the next time. It’s amazing. Yeah. Well, let’s talk a little bit about how this course is set up because we’re having 20 sessions over several weeks and when you taught it first it was all day for a whole week.

Jan Joyce (46m 24s):
Yep.

Diana (46m 24s):
So tell us about your choice of changing that up.

Jan Joyce (46m 26s):
I think we hinted at it already, but the new format of once a week for seven weeks or however many weeks, is suits my style of instructing as well as learning better because again, probably because of my background in, you know, marketing and teaching marketing, and in marketing, I taught theory, but I also taught a lot of applications. So I didn’t have like, you know, Scantron tests of, you know, definitions. It was like, hey, go, you know, do this project right and apply the theory to something that was, you know, the, like, that was not theoretical, right? That was real world. And so that’s where I’m coming from and I want to do the same with genealogy. So I don’t wanna like lecture at people, if that makes sense.

Jan Joyce (47m 9s):
I have a much different style of being open and lots of Q and A, I want everyone’s questions answered. So we talk about the material and we interact and engage and then now with a multi-week format, they can go and practice those things in between sessions. In one week, you know, you’re exhausted after, you know, six or seven hours of sitting in a, in an online zoom course, right? And a lot of people still diligently did work during the evening, but it’s, it is exhausting and I think we comprehend less and retain less in that format. So that’s the background for moving to a multi-week format.

Jan Joyce (47m 50s):
So I’m, I’m really excited about it. You know, students need this time to let things marinate. It actually makes the instructors better too, right? I, I think of so many changes I wanna make and I can, I can change course or add them in the next week. So this is really great format for all of us. We’re, we’re really excited.

Diana (48m 6s):
Well, I think it makes it more approachable for people who just can’t take a whole week out of their life, you know, one day a week catch up on whatever you didn’t get done, go back at it. So I think it’ll be great to try it out this way.

Jan Joyce (48m 20s):
Agreed. And actually that was, you know, that was feedback from the session. I, you know, right before we talked about taking feedback And I asked the question, now you guys are done, of course we can’t change it for you, but In the future, what do you think of this in a multi-week format? And overwhelmingly they said yes.

Diana (48m 36s):
Great.

Nicole (48m 37s):
Well, you know, we love a multi-week format. That’s how we do our study groups. So it’s great.

Jan Joyce (48m 43s):
It is good.

Nicole (48m 45s):
Well, now let’s talk about AI tools for a sec, because you mentioned that Kristen’s gonna teach about that. How do AI tools help with Merging and Separating Identities?

Jan Joyce (48m 55s):
Oh my gosh. So many ways. And as I mentioned we had, and I think we still will this year and even in future years have, you know, students come in with varied experiences and expertise in AI. We want you to know that’s okay. What Kristen explores and teaches us is fine for any level. So we just ask that you’re open-minded. So even the folks who came in last year as what I would call like AI doubters that came out of Kirsten’s sessions ready and willing to try it, those were probably the, the bigger group of who came In the next week a little sheepish saying, okay, I tried it and wow, look what it could do, right? So AI can be just so powerful for us in terms of pattern recognition and processing fast amounts of data, faster than we can, right?

Jan Joyce (49m 41s):
So it can help us like identify potential name variants. One of the things I did with it, for Henry Dewitt, I always think I have all my spelling variants. You know, I totally know that dewitt is D-E-W-I-T-T-D-E-W-I-T-D-E space, WITT, and You know, N-E-D-E-V-I-T-T, what didn’t I think of? White? It comes from of white. So I didn’t even have White on my list to look for, and Claude, my AI boyfriend, figured that out. So now I have that on my list as a, as a, you know, alternate spelling potentially or variant, right? So, but AI doesn’t replace us, right?

Jan Joyce (50m 23s):
You know, AI doesn’t understand Genealogical Proof Standard, they don’t know when evidence is weak or strong and it can’t really evaluate source reliability the way we can. So here’s how we teach students to use it. Like let it be your research assistant, not your decision maker. Use it to do like the legwork, right? Organizing data, spotting patterns, and even generating ideas for you. Lots of times when I use AI, I’ll ask a question and I won’t like the answer, but it will make me think of something else that I use. So it’s just really great to bounce things off of it. We’re still really important in the equation and you know, that will never change. One student I remember used AI to suggest that two women with different surnames might be the same person and AI confirmed it, but it took that a traditional approach to prove it conclusively.

Jan Joyce (51m 9s):
So you can think of AI as like a, a magnifying glass that helps you see some details you might miss, but you’re still the one who needs to interpret what you’ve seen.

Nicole (51m 20s):
That’s so great. I love all of those ideas about AI being your assistant, and not your decision maker, and still being part of the process as the human

Jan Joyce (51m 28s):
I’m preaching to your choir there, Nicole, I think,

Nicole (51m 33s):
Right?

Diana (51m 34s):
Yes, indeed. AI is so powerful, but yet can be so troubling, you have to be so careful. Well, I noticed that you have a literature review component, so why is that part of the course?

Jan Joyce (51m 47s):
I know, doesn’t that sound so horrible and dry and boring? I, you can admit it. I hear you laughing. I know you were thinking that guys

Diana (51m 54s):
Literature review. No, I, I love literature reviews. Okay.

Jan Joyce (51m 57s):
But like, you know, first of all, it’s one of my, my several topical obsessions in genealogy and I’ve, I’ve taught about it for years and written about it and everything. And again, this might be my biased, you know, academic, academic background, right? We always start with a literature review. So let me describe what it is. So a literature review is a, you know, identifying published material that can help you in a case. And so for us as genealogists, our interpretation of that is usually that case isn’t gonna be about our family, but what we can learn from a case is if it has a similar problem, and then we can learn about how that was resolved.

Jan Joyce (52m 36s):
So from this Susan Gliddon 2017 case that, that I resolved, since that point, I started keeping this database, an Excel spreadsheet. You guys, I’m such a dork, I’m so sorry. But I started keeping this database of like M/S cases and every time X or Y or Z journal was published, I’d add to the database. And I added, started out in webinars. So now there’s like, I forget like 105, 110 sources or resources in this database. And it’s not just like the listing of them that’s important, but then I’ve read every case and watched every webinar, and broken it down in about, I don’t know, 25 or 30 ways to tell you like what kind of case it is, what kind of things were used to resolve it, et cetera.

Jan Joyce (53m 23s):
So it’s my work over many years and that I describe it in our course and then I give it that Excel spreadsheet, that database to our students so they can, they can use it for their cases. So what they can do is look through the cases and find out which ones might mirror those the best, and then go read those articles or watch those webinars and get ideas. So it’s basically like learning from the experts, but trying to be more specific.

Diana (53m 51s):
Oh my goodness, that is amazing. That would be worth the course just that right there, getting that resource is so much.

Jan Joyce (53m 57s):
Someone told me that, someone told me that,

Diana (54m 0s):
Oh, I am really excited about that because you sometimes you just, I love your term, learn from the experts. Sometimes you just need to see how somebody else solved it and the type of sources they went to and what they had to do to get something actually proven to give you the idea of how much work it’s going to take to prove you’re right.

Jan Joyce (54m 22s):
Right, right. Yep. I, I use literature reviews for all kinds of reasons, type of case is one of them. So it’s so powerful.

Diana (54m 29s):
Nice.

Jan Joyce (54m 30s):
And you know, it often gives you ideas that maybe it didn’t use them, but it’ll just give you new idea like, oh, I need to try this. So, very powerful.

Nicole (54m 40s):
Jan, what is the difference between how a beginner and an experienced genealogist would benefit from this course?

Jan Joyce (54m 47s):
So, that’s a good question. I would say that we have designed it, or at least either intentionally or accidentally, that everybody can, can grow from, from the course and from what folks told me last year, that the folks that were more in the beginner or even intermediate end benefited the most from like some foundational techniques and tools. So learning how to identify descriptors and collect them and, and put them in a spreadsheet and use that spreadsheet. Learning about what an identity dossier is and how they can use that to try and tease out if there are multiple identities.

Jan Joyce (55m 28s):
And then just understanding the three main types of scenarios. So, so beginners and intermediate can all learn from those, those i, those concepts So that they established like good habits from the start. One person who was fairly new to genealogy told me like, I wish I’d taken this course before I started any research because now I should have understood what I’ve been tracking all along. I think we all have the, I wish I knew then what I know now kind of regrets, right? But yes, that’s, that’s like, you know, we can’t become expert in anything immediately. So, and then I also mentioned already that we, you know, we had quite experienced researchers in our group, some certified, some accredited and some experienced just with amazing expertise and education.

Jan Joyce (56m 14s):
But they’ve been stuck on a case for years because, like me probably with that Henry Dewitt Bible page, you know, something stuck early on that I didn’t go back and re-question. But this course provides like techniques, tools and I’d say the time to think about those more, to think about them slowly and more thoughtfully and we provide the tools. So I’m excited that, you know, we can provide that to really different levels of genealogists. I think some person said something like this to me last year, like, you know, I was doing advanced research but with beginner tools And I was like, oh that’s an interesting way to think about it, right?

Jan Joyce (56m 58s):
So I really feel like it does have a lot for everybody.

Nicole (57m 3s):
That’s so true that we can be a beginner and get a lot from it or we can be an like an expert already and get a lot from it too because we’re working on some of our own cases and applying it.

Jan Joyce (57m 17s):
Exactly.

Diana (57m 17s):
Well I always feel like a brand new genealogist whenever I start one of my projects because we might be working in a different location or just something different, different record set. You know, if you’ve never used a specific type of records and then all of a sudden you’ve got to use those, yeah, you’re a beginner again, doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been doing this or how experienced you are. So I agree. I think a good genealogist is a good learner.

Jan Joyce (57m 44s):
I love that. And I honestly, I think that, you know, we have a lot of education junkies that we all know, right? And I am also an education junkie and this course feeds that need and that desire, But it also helps people become experience junkies because they can do, right, they can take action immediately and not just sit and learn. So I love that it’s combining both those things.

Diana (58m 10s):
Yeah, that’s really fun. Well, can you tell us some success stories you’ve had from those students who took the course?

Jan Joyce (58m 19s):
Sure. I love the testimonials that we have on video and in writing and those will be in the, in the show notes. So check those out if you haven’t yet. And I have to tell you that for me, that’s why I do what I do. Like I teach because I love the success stories and the breakthrough moments and seeing that excitement, hearing that thrill of someone having a breakthrough. So there’s like breakthrough stories. So they’d been stuck on a case for a long time and they finally cracked it using one or more of the methodologies from the course. One woman was trying to identify her great great grandmother for years and she used Nicole’s, like, spreadsheet and correlation techniques to finally distinguish between three women of the same name, and then, you know, she found her ancestor.

Jan Joyce (59m 5s):
So that’s like amazing. There are some kind of like what I call prevention stories. You know, students who they have or could in the near future make a mistake. I know that sounds kind of strange, but one participant discovered she’d been on the verge of merging two people into one and that would’ve of course messed up her whole line. So the course helped her separate the identities, you know, before she did damage. And my favorite story is like breakthroughs are transformational ones where students completely changed their research approach. Several people from last year told us that they now start every new project with many of these methods. So not just M/S cases, you guys, like I was have to say very surprised to hear that it makes sense now that I think about it more, but I didn’t anticipate that as an outcome, is that so many of the things that we explore In the course are can be used kind of for all cases, not just M/S cases.

Jan Joyce (1h 0m 1s):
So one student said, this fundamentally changed how I do genealogy research across the board, not just for identity problems. And that was, it was amazing.

Diana (1h 0m 8s):
Well, I believe that anytime you get organized and have some tools, it absolutely changes what you do. Airtable changed everything for us. Actually doing accreditation gave me was a huge change for me in just getting a research process and using a research log. I mean those things are huge.

Jan Joyce (1h 0m 27s):
Agreed.

Diana (1h 0m 27s):
So I can see how it would really go across the board, the changes,

Jan Joyce (1h 0m 31s):
Well I think with many of us at the point of like, I think I only have hard cases left, you know what I mean? Like I don’t have any more low hanging fruit and so I, I now have to be more thorough, more thoughtful, slower than I was before. And a lot of these tools help with that.

Diana (1h 0m 54s):
Agreed.

Nicole (1h 0m 55s):
Well this course is a significant time and financial investment, so how can we help students determine if it’s right for them?

Jan Joyce (1h 1m 3s):
Hmm, that’s a fair question. And we really do want students who would benefit from the course. So I think some things that would indicate a good fit, we mentioned, you know, some comfortable use of spreadsheets would be important that they can, if they can attend, you know, the multi-week sessions in-person, I always prefer that over, you know, watching the recordings. But obviously, you know, some people have conflicts a week here, week there, but I also had people who last year only watched recordings and wrote to me afterwards telling me about a breakthrough and I’m like, I didn’t even see you in the class, you know? So I personally like people there because it, it engages me, but I can understand if they miss a session or two too, when we will provide recordings people like we just mentioned, who wanna become better researchers overall and not just solving a quick problem.

Jan Joyce (1h 1m 53s):
This is knowing that some of these things don’t sound fun, you know what I mean? Like logging a bunch of descriptors into a big spreadsheet doesn’t sound like a bunch of fun, but I kind of loved it. And those kind of things that sound challenging become some of our best tools for solving problems.

Diana (1h 2m 12s):
Okay. So you’ve given us some good tips for who is right for this course. Is there someone who’s not right for the course or who should not take it?

Jan Joyce (1h 2m 19s):
Oh, I knew you were gonna ask me that. Let’s see. So I would say really just being open-minded and willing to try something new, even if it’s uncomfortable, that’s where I’d really land. So if, you know, if you, you’re getting your hands dirty in this course, right? You’re doing things, you’re trying things that are really different and if you’re, I guess opposed to that, then I would say it’s not, you know, you wouldn’t be satisfied. So that’s the only thing I can think of there.

Diana (1h 2m 48s):
Well that’s fair. So what do you hope students will take away from this, besides these techniques?

Jan Joyce (1h 2m 54s):
The techniques for sure. And then I would say the confidence and open-mindedness. So if you look at some of the testimonials, one word really stands out to me and when like more than one person said it, I was kind of blown away and they used the word empowered, they said they now felt empowered to go back and research. In other words, they had the confidence and they knew they could try different techniques to progress their case. So I think it’s that feeling of empowerment that is fueled by the techniques that makes people excited and successful.

Diana (1h 3m 37s):
Well I agree. I think confidence and curiosity are just amazing.

Jan Joyce (1h 3m 42s):
I like that.

Nicole (1h 3m 43s):
Alright, well tell me about the materials that support the course between sessions as well as any homework.

Jan Joyce (1h 3m 49s):
Okay, great question. I should have mentioned this earlier. So if anybody has been to an institute course, there’s something known as a syllabus, at which is a misnomer in my opinion, having come out of academia, right? A syllabus is like one or two or three pages that tells you what you’re gonna study every week in class. The genealogy version of a syllabus is a textbook, okay? So it’s something that is usually 200, 300 pages where each session is supported by a five to 15 page document. And so compiled that makes this truly a textbook, right? And what I’ve learned from a lot of past courses is that people don’t open it, people don’t read it ahead, people don’t look at it, they don’t refer back to it.

Jan Joyce (1h 4m 38s):
And I’m just, so I’m thinking I want things that are actionable and important for people. So what we’ve created in this course has support material for every session that sometimes is provided before the session, sometimes just during the session and sometimes after the session. So it’s very like worksheet oriented so that it’s like one page of how to, or like where people can fill In the blanks instead of like, you know, 10 pages of explaining something. So it’s, it’s very oriented towards that. And it also has other kinds of actionable tools. Like I provide an Excel spreadsheet, Nicole provides an Airtable Templates so people can start work right then and build, you know, build their own, their own case, right?

Jan Joyce (1h 5m 25s):
So it’s very oriented around hands-on and not around a lot of verbiage. We give out that common data set ahead of the course and we ask people to work on that as far as pre-course work. And we already mentioned the importance of that. And then between sessions we suggest things, but we don’t require it because if they wanna go apply it to their own work, that’s ideal. And then we have a, you know, like a 30 minute session before the, the next week’s class that they can ask questions or share frustrations or share successes So that we can make sure we address everything that they learned from the previous week.

Nicole (1h 6m 4s):
Okay. That is so funny because we always used to hear handouts and now institutes say syllabus and now I’m thinking, okay, I need to go back to handouts.

Jan Joyce (1h 6m 14s):
Yeah, I think it is much more appropriate for this course.

Nicole (1h 6m 19s):
It’s just funny that I do remember back in college when we would get that contract called the syllabus and that was like the outline of the course.

Jan Joyce (1h 6m 23s):
Yeah, it’s nothing like this. I don, I don’t know who started this in genealogy, I wanna have a word with them.

Diana (1h 6m 29s):
I love it. Well that kinda goes back to this idea too, that you have time to tweak things in between.

Jan Joyce (1h 6m 35s):
Yeah, exactly.

Diana (1h 6m 36s):
So that, you know, you can see something’s needed you, you add that rather than a syllabus that you have to turn in typically like months in advance, and then as things change, there’s no opportunity to go update it. So yep, this is, this is really great format. Well, as we finish up here, let’s just have some fun because we’ve heard that people say your courses are fun. And why would that be?

Jan Joyce (1h 6m 59s):
Well, thank you for asking that question. I, I do like to have fun. I do like to have a light atmosphere. I do like to have people engage. That’s I guess the basis for it. But also like if you’re enjoying yourself, you learn better, right? So hands-on workshops, open environment in which no question is bad is helps us to have fun. And, gosh, I can’t quote this verbatim, but someone last year did say to me, I learned as much from my classmates as I did from the instructors and that made my day right? We have so much to learn from each other and then I try to try some other techniques that that just make it fun.

Jan Joyce (1h 7m 40s):
And overall, so as some examples are like, one of the worksheets that I have is, is is in the Math Libs format. You guys remember that? Like, you know that little, you flip a page and like you fill in blank words with a hint underneath as to like what it should be like, you know, like I might be a travel story, so you fill in like a vegetable and whatever. So we use Mad Libs to help understand some of our assumptions. I use a hidden pictures in a drawing to replicate some of our research process. And then it’s even just during our Zoom sessions we like to have fun like each, each session I have someone add something to their Zoom name that tells us a little bit more about them and we can, we can go off on those topics. Like we could go on tangents if we wanted to, but like, you know, we might say like, what’s your favorite dessert?

Jan Joyce (1h 8m 19s):
But we usually try and make it like genealogical related, like what’s the strangest name in your family tree? So that’s super fun. And then we also do stuff like dressing up one day for taking a class photo. So we just try to have a good time and that makes people, I think have have a better environment to learn.

Diana (1h 8m 38s):
Well that’s a fun idea. Dressing up and taking the class photo. That’s awesome. Those are all really fun ideas. I love it.

Nicole (1h 8m 45s):
Alright everyone, I hope you enjoyed hearing all about this course. And if you’re anything like me after this episode, you’re excited to work on your own case and on the the common data set. It’s gonna be so fun. And if you haven’t registered yet, there’s a few spots left. So come on over to FamilyLocket.com and click on shop, then go to institute courses and then you’ll see the Merging and Separating Identities course and you can register and if you’re already registered, think about who you can bring a friend who might wanna sign up with you, who would enjoy having fun and learning about separating and merging identities. Well, thank you so much for coming, Jan, this has been so fun to have you and to talk about this.

Jan Joyce (1h 9m 27s):
I love this material so much and as you, as you can tell, like I, our instructor team is fantastic. So we really love putting it out there for everybody.

Nicole (1h 9m 35s):
Alright everyone, this is so fun. We hope that we’ll see lots of you there and thanks for listening to this episode. We will talk to you again next week. Bye-bye.

Jan Joyce (1h 9m 45s):
Bye.

Diana (1h 9m 48s):
Bye-bye.

Nicole (1h 9m 48s):
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.