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Kirsten:
00:00:09
This week, Kellie and I talk about being flexible in the moment, so you can be responsive to your audience's needs. Hear how a video development company is getting this very wrong, and what Snoop Dogg has to do with Kellie's syllabus. Let's jump into it. Hello everyone. Welcome to Ongoing Mastery: Presenting Speaking the podcast and the discussion. Hi Kellie, how are you? I am well. How are you Kirsten? Good. So what are we doing today? Well,
Kellie:
00:00:41
today we are following up. Last week, Pegine, in her interview with you, Was talking about the importance of knowing your audience, and that's also something that Heather Little preview is gonna be talking about with you next week. And so we wanted to pick up on this topic about how knowing your audience is connected to being flexible in the moment.
Kirsten:
00:01:04
Yes, very, very much so. So
Kellie:
00:01:07
what does that look like for someone with a background like yours, Kirsten, as a tech trainer?
Kirsten:
00:01:12
So this is something that you and I were talking about earlier and that I think many people in the audience who have some technical background, uh, are gonna be aware of. There is a company called Unity, Unity Software, who makes a lot of very famous games. They. They're in the process of setting their company on fire this week. So one of the things that happened is they put out a statement saying they were changing their terms of service. They were trying to make some of those changes retroactive, and they put some conditions in there that was, once we update this, that means you've accepted the changes. Which hell no. And then they also put in, they wanna do a revenue model that's based on installations of games, which is a horribly stupid idea and is not going to work. I'm not shocked by this because the CEO of that company is somebody who had a previous company pitched charging users for every single bullet in a shooting game. Oh. Yeah. Like, wow. He's, he basically, this guy has no use for gamers whatsoever. Being in charge of a game dev company. Unity does many things. One of them is game development. Clearly they've decided that part of their business is just, doesn't matter. Wow. Which is a shame, but here's the problem. Beyond just the ethics of it all. Mm-hmm. A lot of people who are Midway Instream right now, like 2, 3, 4 years into their game dev and have been using Unity, can't rebuild it, and you know, they'll lose all that time. It is just, that's a huge problem. And then people who've been in school, mm-hmm. if those training programs and those schools, which a lot of them do focus on one product exclusively. A lot of folks are coming out with training now into the world on a tool that people are running away from. Like it's on fire. Yikes. So here's why that matters. When I was a tech trainer, because I was freelance, I had to learn a lot of different products. And once you learn one product in a suite, you generally then can extrapolate that out. But I. Because I was a freelancer, I also, I needed to know not only their product, but I needed to know at least something about the competition because people would ask me. Yeah. And they'd ask for comparisons and things, and I would say, well, that's not a product I teach as I'm aware of. It's this, this, and this. Beyond that, I don't know. Mm-hmm. So I'd give them the basics, but I couldn't say every single time, no clue. That's not my thing. Because they were asking valid, useful questions. So, yeah. Any CIO, any CTO, anybody at the top level of any group right now that is responsible for technical training, please hear me. If you do not have adaptability built into your processes, where you're looking at the tools that you're training people on, and if the company. That tool belongs to, decides to pull something stupid. what does that do to you? Is that a reputational risk for you? Is that gonna suddenly kill your projects? It's a big risk to take. Yeah. But it's one of those things where cross training and being a little more. I don't have the right phrase for it, but essentially spending time to have people know the broader area of their subject. Mm-hmm. is not a waste, even though it's seen that way by a lot of companies of like, well, that's not a good use of our time. It's like, well, but software risk is reputational risk. It's customer risk, it's a problem. And if you're not thinking about the fact that all your eggs are in this one basket, you've got a real, you know, ride or die with that company. And if that company pulls something like what Unity is pulling now, yeah. I mean, there are game developers out there. Unity is putting out this, oh, ridiculous thing of, oh, well, it's only gonna affect 10%. People are gonna go bankrupt. Yeah. Oh gosh. Some companies, some will actually go bankrupt if they do this. This is simply not okay. And when it comes to this kind of adaptability, if you're a technical trainer, if you're a freelancer, you have to do what I did. You have to be, you know, multi-platform. You have to be agnostic. if you're in something where it's, we all use this. Mm-hmm. just be aware. You may need to be trained up on some other stuff in case you need to change jobs or in case something happens, or in case suddenly there's layoffs. So just build in a certain amount of, stay aware of how the zen of the subject applies. Yeah. To more than one thing. Like knowing game development at the core levels crosses product. So yeah, that's my, that's my rant that I needed to have today. So thank you for opening that door. 'cause I've been a little cranky for a few days. So for you, how does this show up? Because I know this shows up for you. How does this show
Kellie:
00:06:15
up? Yes, it does. So we are recording this at the beginning, more or less couple weeks into the fall semester. I teach this semester three sections of first year college writing. And so when I have to think about my audience, I have
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to think about who's. In my chairs, and it's not just as you might think first semester freshmen, it's a lot of first semester students brand, brand new college students. But I have a surprisingly large number of transfer students who are juniors, and so they don't need the same level of conversation as the brand, brand new freshman. But I can't. Just teach to them. It's not what the class is for. So I have to find a way to kind of square the circle and frame the way I am talking about the concepts of the course as everybody has skills to get here. This class is to make sure everybody leaves it with the same orientation and the same exposure, and so it's not minimizing or dismissing anybody's previous experience. But it's a, this is how we do it here, and we take a project-based approach to a lot of the writing assignments, which students may or may not be familiar with. And so there's a fair amount of breaking bad habits. So I have to be up on what is it that my, especially straight from high school students are likely to have been taught so that I can effectively counter program it, as it were. Yeah. This is getting a lot easier as our daughter is getting ever closer to the age of my college freshman. And so what she is learning is much more in track with what they are learning overall. Of course, they still come from different kinds of school systems and all, but it's a lot easier because I run more and more things by her just for a generation check. Right. And I have to keep in mind, I am at a business school. A lot of my students don't especially wanna be in my class, not my class, just the writing class.
Kirsten:
00:08:23
Explain why. Explain what your class is, right? Well,
Kellie:
00:08:26
it's a required class and it is the first of two required classes in writing, and it is not how to write business memos or contracts or anything like that. It's not a business writing class. It's a how to think critically. And write about what you're thinking class. And a lot of students don't see the value of that right away. They're eager to get to the good stuff and there's a lot of work involved. And that can be a hard sell, especially at an institution that has a focus that's so specific. Having students be interested outside of that focus is sometimes like, but that's not why I came here. It's like, ah, but it is why you came here. You just don't know it yet.
Kirsten:
00:09:08
Yes, and that's exactly it. yeah.
Kellie:
00:09:11
Thinking about being aware of what my students are likely to have read, so when I'm talking with them, when I'm making selections for the syllabus with a global student population, I can't get this right all of the time, but I can try to pick things that are less likely to be immediately familiar. To them. I have to think about my eight o'clock class of students often has a lot of athletes in it because they need their afternoon free for their sport. And so I have to think about something like, okay, this particular eight o'clock class, we need to be energized. 'cause these students have a long day, they have rolled out of bed. Maybe they have practiced before their eight o'clock class. Right? And so I can't just make assumptions about who's in that class and why. But I can say at eight o'clock, we all need an energy boost. And so maybe I'm gonna think about how I arrange the activities that we'll be doing so that they can get up and move around halfway through instead of sitting, sitting, sitting, sleepy awake that you know, sometimes happens.
Kirsten:
00:10:16
Yeah, I, I definitely look back on stuff I used to do in college, and I'm now embarrassed in hindsight and grateful that I was never that kid in your class, because you killed me. I showed up in pajamas with bunny slippers and a two liter bottle of Coke. See, I don't even
Kellie:
00:10:35
care about that. I know so many of my students are in their pajamas or their gym clothes, and as long as they don't stink, right, as long as they haven't combed straight from the gym, trailing sweat, I don't care. I mean, some comb straight from the fashion pages, so it's really quite a range
Kirsten:
00:10:55
so that's awesome because yeah, I I made a few professors unhappy. Yeah.
Kellie:
00:11:00
You know what, if it's eight o'clock and you're in your pajamas, as long as your pajamas are appropriate to be out in public, I don't care. Yeah.
Kirsten:
00:11:06
I admit the bunny slippers were a bit much, but I was, you know, I had to have this eight o'clock class and I didn't wanna be there and I was a punk, but, you know, we did it and, and they did a great job. The thing about. Your students and my customers and everybody is, it's interesting how often people don't realize that even though the lesson is not obvious, the lesson's there. Mm-hmm. So it's just a matter of, because it's, there's this gung-ho go, go, go. Let's get to the goal kind of behavior. It's not really welcomed to stop and just. Take in, okay, what can I get from this? Even if this is a completely counterintuitive thing, what might that teach me? That's not really a skillset that's embraced in a lot of places, and I know you and I have talked about this because it's something we work with on our clients. Yeah. With our clients. And it can be hard for people, especially really type A people to just bring it back a little bit and not do that. That's sorry.
Kellie:
00:12:13
One of the things that we have built into the program reflection, each of the major assignments comes with a reflection piece that is due after the primary deadline, and it is part of the grade for the thing, but you can't do it all at once because we want students to go to sleep, get something to eat, go to class, do whatever, and come back with a different perspective just because time has passed and take another look at what they've done, what went well. What do they need to continue to work on for the next project so that it's not just a check it off the list, get it
done, move on, kind of thing. That they are themselves looking at the value of it. And it's one of the things I like best about the program because it helps students take ownership of what they're doing. They're not doing it for me. I mean, of course they're doing it for me. It's my class. I grade it, but that's not the point. They have to be able to generate this from within themselves and have some idea of how it looks in the real
Kirsten:
00:13:15
world. Yep. And so for everybody watching and listening, this is ongoing mastery and it's about presenting and speaking. But as we've said in previous episodes, and we'll say later again, a lot of things fall under that. You know, I'm talking about video games. She's talking about a literature class. What is it in your world that you were surprised, gave value to your work? What is it that enhanced it or refreshed your perspective on it that you never would've expected? Share that with us in the comments. You know, come on social and, and let us know because we wanna see kind of where people are. For me, I'm gonna say I didn't truly embrace how much. Learning storytelling was going to impact what I do. When I started adding that into to my work and it became more of a thing in instructional design. But I admit I was a little grudging at first doing the, well, yes, of course, of course it's valuable, but, and then really started going. Oh, okay. And it took a few rounds of it for me to really see the value. What did that for you? When
Kellie:
00:14:27
I realized that I really do need to make the subtext, the context, and you say, we are doing this because here's how this connects to the thing we've done before. Here's. The five paragraph essay that you are used to doing, and that's fine. It's not wrong, but it's training wheels and it's time to take the training wheels off and really be much more explicit about the connective tissue instead of, but isn't it obvious, assuming that because it was on the syllabus and because it was stated in a variety of places that students could follow the logic of how those things. Put together, and perhaps they could if they put in a lot of effort, but since there are a thousand memes about reading the syllabus, we're just happy when they read it, much less when they study it. And so instead of just being frustrated, just making the subtext, the explicit context, and then they start really getting it and applying it much earlier in the semester.
Kirsten:
00:15:31
That's fantastic. The syllabus thing, I mean, some people put, you know, little, little jokes in. I know I've read one where at the very end it's, if you got to this point, email me with this keyword and I will send you a thing. Yep. You know, I have I have
Kellie:
00:15:47
two, two Rick rolls, one of them, you know, so you click here to download the file and then in the same line it says, no really. Click here to download the file, but still click here to download the file. And the second one is Snoop Dogg. It's a short little clip on YouTube Yoyoyo students. Man, you gotta read the syllabus. That's where it's at. And the third one, The third one is, To the seventies, sort of smooth tune, just the two of us. It's on the syllabus. Oh God. You can read it if you try. It's on the syllabus
Kirsten:
00:16:23
and, and how many people have come back to you or how many students have come back to you and said, oh my God, that killed me. It
Kellie:
00:16:30
is not as high as one per class, generally, at least one per semester. But, and sometimes someone will see it and then I'll click on it and now everybody sees it and we all laugh. So that's, that's kind of cheating. But on their own, without any hint from me, one out of 60 or so per semester.
Kirsten:
00:16:51
Yeah, sounds about right, Alright, so this is connective tissue, like exactly what Kelly was talking about is we're taking from last week's interview with Pegine and we're looking forward to next week's interview with Heather and there are cross the stream kind of things going on. Yeah, so that's what we're doing today. And please, as always, Subscribe, like, share. Let us know what you think and we will see you next time. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Bye.
Kellie:
00:17:26
Cheers.
Kirsten:
00:17:35
If you enjoyed this conversation about flexibility when speaking, check out our earlier conversation on this topic in season four, episode number 46. How can speakers and presenters adapt in the moment? The link is in the show notes.