13.16 A Year of Instruction

I just finished a yearly project. Each day of the month I posted on a pre-determined theme. During the month of November, I'll post a collage of all my photos on the daily theme from the past year. The theme for the sixteenth day of the month was "Instruction."

*********************

What Do You Prefer? - I did not get the job.
Training Mode (re)Activated - We are not good about training these days.
Where's My Adulting Manual? - I still claim we should get one of these.
Overdue: Reckoning with the Public Library by Amanda Oliver - I did not like this book.
My Reading Journey - I was a late reader. 
Teaching Philosophy - Lots of words about why I teach the way I do.
Meet Humphrey - The first sighting of Humps on the blog!
Melting Chocolate - Ha ha ha. I taught a college student how to melt chocolate without burning it. 
Retrievers on Display - Diving dogs!
Mundane Happiness - Ten things that make me happy.
How to Survive a Gnome Attack - Lawn art.
Procrastination - Hannah hates having her photo taken.

****************
Hannah count: 4
Humphrey count: 1

Other dogs count: 1

Grumpy teenager count: 1

Sign count: 2

Book count: 10

Blaze orange count: 1

****************

Poor Zelda. According to this collage, she never learns anything new.

****************

I spent Wednesday morning doing all the dumb mandatory trainings for my institution. In particular, I did the information security and sexual harassment (Title IX) trainings and boy was I ever annoyed at how useless they were. There are a few things of note.

1) System outsources these to consulting firms, so they are generic, as in not tailored to my university or even the greater system of universities my university is a part of. So, sure, I can learn about federal laws related to Title IX, but not how to, you know, report something on my own campus. It sort of makes the whole thing feel useless and vague.

2) All right, FINE. No one is going to make a training unique to my institution (I mean...why can't this be done?), so maybe the courses should be better at using specific examples that might be useful.

The above image is a screenshot of a wrap-up of a module on the dangers inherent to remote working. Nowhere in that module was "security mindset" defined and "take care when at home, in public or traveling" was repeated several times, but there were no examples given. No keep doors locked in your home so people can't steal your computer, no password protect your computer and/or documents in case someone does get into your computer, no don't use the public wi-fi at airports and coffee shops, no don't leave your computer awake during smoke breaks. NOTHING.  What a colossal waste of time.

3) My final complaint is that the Title IX was two hours long and in the end, the real lesson I learned was that if I either see an example of harassment or discrimination or a student or co-worker discloses to me, I'm pretty much guaranteed to mess up my response. I feel no more confident about actually handling one of these situations than I was when I started the training. That seems like a bad use of my two hours.

But, bonus. I scored perfectly on the quiz. 

Have you seen any bad instruction recently?