Genealogy learning

My transcriptions, abstractions and extractions should be just that little bit better now, having just finished a National Institute of Genealogical Studies course on transcribing, abstracting and, you guessed it, extracting.

To be honest, I wasn’t champing at the bit to start on this course. It was part of a package of the 9 basic level courses in the Australian Records certificate stream, which I had bought after winning a heavy discount for the courses as a door prize. This is my eighth course. The other remaining course is supposed to be done last. See? Not champing.

Most of the course was devoted to practicing transcribing, abstracting, extracting and quoting. I would have liked to see more examples in the course notes, especially of abstractions. However, since I’m actually feeling quite enthused about the idea of transcribing and abstracting various of the documents I hold I would have say that it surpassed my expectations and rate it positively!

The other courses

So far the course materials have been excellent, particularly the subjects specific to Australia.

I’m not entirely sold on the format of the courses. The weekly assignments submitted online are not too onerous, but you don’t get any individual feedback and I’m not sure if they play any part in the final score you receive. The final exam is multiple choice. That’s… ok. It works better with some topics than with others. It must be hard to put together a good multiple choice exam. Questions tend to range from ridiculously easy, to almost being trick questions.

The final course of the package is the “Analysis and Skills Mentoring Program-Part 1”. This will be quite different from the other courses. Instead of running for about 8 weeks, you have a year to complete the work. The course materials say that “Feedback will be provided during the course”. Having just complained about the lack of feedback in the other courses, my feeling about actually getting feedback is “eeek!” It sounds a bit scary, but I think it will be good. I might take a little break before I get this one started.

Then come some big decisions:

• Should I cough up the fairly substantial amount to enrol in another package of classes?
• Do I want to eventually do (and pay for) another 30 classes in order to earn a certificate?
• If I do want to earn a certificate, is this the one I want to earn and the body I want to earn it with?

For now, I’m pleased with what I’ve done and am looking forward to having a bit more time to do other work on my family tree.

Two more courses completed

I’ve just finished up the coursework and exams for two more National Institute for Genealogical Studies courses. They were “Social Media for the Wise Genealogist” and “Australia: Births, Deaths and Marriages”.

I signed up for the social media course when it was offered for free. I picked up a bit from the course, not a huge amount, but then I am fairly well immersed in various kinds of social media for genealogy already. It would be a good course to give an overview to someone starting out in genealogy, or in social media, an idea of the range of opportunities there are for online interaction and what you might gain from it. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend all of the sites and services discussed in the course as the best in their class, but then there’s a lot of personal preference in that.

The Australia: Births, Deaths and Marriages course is for me part of the Australian certificate – basic level, which I signed up to after winning a hefty discount voucher as a door prize. It can also be taken as a stand-alone course. The reading material for this course (prepared by Kerry Farmer) was very thorough and will be an excellent reference. While I was familiar with birth, death and marriage sources for Victoria, I had only superficial knowledge of the other States. I will definitely refer to the course notes before heading too far into research in other States and Territories, if my research leads me that way, as there is a lot of variation in how this information can be accessed between States.

I found that doing two courses at once I had no concern about whether I could complete the work in time. However, I also found that by the end I was tired of the amount of writing involved and as a result cut back on blogging, writing to other researchers, twittering – anything text based! So, my apologies to the people I have neglected. Lesson learnt. In future I will only do one course at a time.

One down, 39 to go?

I recently enrolled in the Basic Australian package of nine courses on www.genealogicalstudies.com, using a heavy discount I won as a door prize at the Unlock the Past Australian History and Genealogy 2010 Roadshow late last year. The idea of study appeals to me. To qualify for their Certificate in Genealogical Studies-Australian Records I would need to continue beyond those first nine courses and complete a total of 40 courses (26 compulsory, 14 electives).

On 7 March I started “Methodology – Part 1”. On 14 March I posted here that I was working on module 2. A week later, I had finished modules 3 to 5 without breaking a sweat. I didn’t want to make the mistake of skipping through the course thinking “yes, yes, I know that” and not taking information in so I gave myself a few days break before embarking on module 6. For me, halfway through module 6 was where I started to feel like there was a bit more substance. Module 6 took longer as it involved a series of assignments such as transcribing documents. Finally, there was a 20 question multiple choice exam, and it was over.

I don’t have a final grade yet as the course doesn’t technically finish for another month. I’m confident that I did well – not perfectly, but well.

My overall impression of the course is that it was very light. I think I would have been disappointed if taking it as a stand-alone subject at full price. I don’t mind it as a building block in a larger package. From everything I have read I understand that later courses will increase in substance and difficulty but even taking into account that I have been playing genealogist on and off for 22 years, this one was light. I found the little there was about research plans quite useful but I was left wanting more. I didn’t participate in any of the online chat sessions, which may have changed my opinion, as I finished the course before there were any sessions at a reasonable hour (my time).

As a more general comment on the course material, it must be hard to try and come up with a “generic” research situation that doesn’t rely on location-specific knowledge. Even if the question asked is generic, the experience of the individual taking the course isn’t.

Despite my comments above, I am feeling very positive about continuing this course of study. I’m looking forward to courses that I hope and expect will give me more to get my teeth into!

Another spur of the moment student

I was reading Geniaus' post, spur of the moment student, about how she signed up for a National Institute for Genealogical Studies course on "Australian and NZ Research".

Like Geniaus, I've been thinking for some time that I'd like to do some sort of genealogy study. I'm not sure how anything too formal would fit into my life at the moment though. It's hard for me to get time. So, the idea of a short course with little pressure, not too pricey, and specific to my research interests was very tempting...



So tempting, that I signed up too!