Propel Professional Learning

What’s the Buzz About Microlearning?  By Rebecca Sherry  Microlearning. Maybe you heard this word at a recent conference. Perhaps you’ve tried out some of Propel’s microlearning offerings like Mental Health Mondays or TSTM-E’s Nine Skills Microlearning Minute . But what is microlearning, and how and why do we use it as an instructional tool? In this blog post, we’re going to investigate those questions and introduce you to some resources for implementing microlearning in your teaching. You will also see some microlearning examples embedded throughout this article as a way to demonstrate how this tool works in practice.   Microlearning Explained   Let’s start by defining microlearning. In their book Microlearning: Short and Sweet, authors Karl Kapp and Robyn Defelice (2019) synthesize several definitions found in the research in this way: Microlearning is an instructional unit that provides a short engagement in an activity intentionally designed to elicit ...

On Emotional Literacy Literacy Corner By Carrie M. Cannella We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us—how we take it, what we do with it—and that is what really counts in the end. ~Joseph Fort Newton   We are living in difficult and divisive times, yet we in adult education and literacy continue to show up and do this work in spite of what disquiets us and unnerves us. As we show up, we can practice grace and ask ourselves how we can support each other in this moment. These skills are essential for emotional literacy. Emotions impact every area of our lives: how we focus, how we learn and make decisions, how we create, how we manage relationships, how we get our work done. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that people with emotional literacy have more positive and realistic self-concepts, have more optimistic thinking, are better equipped to solve problems, and are overall more successful in life and work.  What I...

Professional Learning Book Club: A reflection on a new practice Thoughts on Professional Learning By Nadia Kader Our book club formed when a desire to explore different modalities of professional learning(PL) merged with a desire for extended PL with our staff. At Propel, we continually explore new opportunities to design and develop PL. As times change and budgets shrink, we recognize the need for more PL that is not centered on in-person conferences or institutes. Propel coordinators are exploring asynchronous and hybrid formats for our offerings. Additionally, we are exploring how programs can conduct their own in-house PL. An organization can enhance interpersonal relationships, identify shared goals, and work towards program improvement through collaborative PL. We tested this idea out by running a PL book club with Propel staff.  Book club creation and first steps The coordinator team has done a lot of self-directed PL on our own time, which includes reading books and applyin...