How an open and experimental mindset, passion for the topic and a love of haikus helped Glisi's L&D team deliver extraordinary DEI impact

Published: May 12, 2021, 7 a.m.

b"If you're working for a body whose main mission is to develop a Georgia where schools and communities pursue breakthrough success for all students regardless of race, geography, or family income, you\\u2019re right in thinking that support for diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) is going to be a big priority. Then the pandemic hit\\u2014and here in Season 6 of \\u2018Learning Is The New Working\\u2019 we\\u2019re looking into the impact of the global health crisis on the future of work and Workplace Learning. So this week we get a chance to not just do that, but also to see some real pandemic-inspired L&D innovation, too, as we hear from the great people over at non-profit Glisi, the Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement. Set up by former state Governor Roy Barnes with a mission to uplift school leaders, transform mindsets and action, create vibrant cultures of innovation and build excellent and equitable schools, Glisi is there to help: so get ready to hear how it did so, with something different\\u2014the use of bite-sized, 1200-character max text-based learning\\u2026 and all this in the crazy first months of the \\u2018rona, as part of a drive to help teach thousands of educators and managers in one of the State\\u2019s biggest school districts get to grips with what can be a very challenging topic for L&D (and users). So listen as the organization\\u2019s Senior Program Director Letishia Seabrook Jones and her colleague the Associate Director of Organizational Effectiveness, Kasey Wood, share with us the practicalities of working with this unique L&D tech, which is from Arist, which develops text message-based learning that is strives to be as accessible, engaging, and super effective as possible. These practicalities include working with that very tight constraint of 1200 characters, as well as: a core design principle\\u2014let\\u2019s get through all of this course, even if it makes you uncomfortable; a great project motivator\\u2014How do we keep people uplifted during this year with so much this past year, with so much change, and so much unknown? what it\\u2019s like to build two new courses from scratch, remotely. over 10 days each; going from creating hours or days of content to something much smaller; how text-based content met the need for steady light touches in the flow of work to coach people when maybe they couldn't dedicate 30 minutes, but they could dedicate five or 10, maybe even 15; how useful the supplier\\u2019s guidance was on things feedback on basics of instruction, use of emojis, and where to put links so that they weren't missed; and much more."