Preparing for the Real World: Peace Corps Practicum

The longest blog post about our IT practicum in Armenia that you’ll find anywhere, ever.

(Spoiler alert, in case you don’t want to read to the end: We taught three 2-hour sessions to an Armenian organization on various topics, to help prepare us for the next two years.)

At the end of Peace Corps training, everyone has to do a practicum. This isn’t something I knew, going in. This isn’t even necessarily something I knew one week before we did our practicum, as it was never brought up during our training sessions until the very day it was assigned.

Adam, warming up to the idea of an IT practicum in his very nice knitted hat.

Nevertheless, a practicum we did do, to practice teaching to an Armenian audience. The four of us IT volunteers (Adam, Amy, Brian, and I) were one group. The rest of our CBD class was split into other groups, all assigned to different organizations.

Our organization was Youth for Achievements, an NGO in Yerevan. At our initial meeting, we learned that they wanted trainings on graphic and web design, and social media. Great! Right up my alley!

This is me, (in case you had forgotten what I look like) taking a break from too much IT work to drink a cup of coffee.

Unfortunately for my other group members, the organization did not have need for networking advice, hardware setup, virus problems, computer maintenance, or anything else that would utilize their expertise.

So we decided that I would teach my group members some basics, and together we would teach our organization.

Amy, the flower of our IT group, cheerfully ready to learn about graphic design so she can take a part in our practicum.

We wanted to keep it interesting for our audience, so each day we had some sort of interactive activity planned to get them involved and thinking about or applying what we were teaching.

Brian, fearlessly armed with a toothbrush and sock cape, ready to take on all IT challenges.

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2-4 p.m. “Marketing and Social Media Networking”

The marketing portion, being extremely broad and theoretical, started off a little slow. We tried discussing the marketing goals of YFA, and why these goals were important. At one point, a light went off in my head, as I remembered an article I had read about making an “elevator pitch” for your business.

I described, as best as I remembered, the idea of having a prepared, compelling, 30-second response (approximately the length of an elevator ride where you may engage in a short conversation) about “what you do” for your job. The idea is to spark further questions, instead of the other person just saying, “Well, that’s interesting. Nice to meet you. ‘Bye,” and walking off (the elevator) without remembering anything about you.

After that, things got better, and our audience of five seemed to be more interested in our discussion. We gave them a homework assignment of preparing an elevator pitch to share with the group at our next session.

The second half was more entertaining, as we incorporated our skit. We distributed colorful signs to everyone in the room, each with a label such as:

• YFA Website
• Blog
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Google Analytics

We then had everyone pretend they were what their sign said, and had them explain who they were and how they could be beneficial to YFA, especially working in tandem with one another.

At the end, they asked for more information about Google Analytics, so we changed our game plan for the next session as follows:

Thursday, August 4th, 2-4 p.m. “Principles of Graphic Design and About Google Analytics”

What do you know? I was the only one in our group who has ever used Google Analytics! I use it for this blog, actually. So in teaching our organization about it, I showed them my analytics as an example. (They’re somewhat pitiful, as far as popularity on the web goes, but I figured I may as well keep it real.)

One notable thing I mentioned is to check out where your audience is coming from. I showed them the U.S. map overlay of where my main traffic was coming from, and told them how I analyze it. My main traffic comes from Michigan (where my family is from) and California (where I have lived most recently). There are also a fair number of hits from Alaska (where I have lived and worked) and a couple midwestern states (where I have family and friends.) And then there’s New Jersey. NEW JERSEY??? Just curious, who are you, and do I know you?

Google Analytics Map Overlay for my Blog. Notice that I have a lot of hits from New Jersey. Whoever you are, please stand up and be counted!

Anyway, I told YFA that if they have traffic from an unexpected place, they might want to investigate, and either start directing their marketing toward that area, or change something on their website to get traffic from a more preferable location, more beneficial to their organization.

The other part of our presentation was about the CARP design principles. (We thought this would be more professional than introducing the CRAP principles, which is the way I was taught.) This stands for Contrast, Alignment, Repetition, and Proximity. Each of us presented one of the principles, explained what it meant, and showed a few examples of it at work.

After this, we had our three audience members look at some of YFA’s print marketing materials and say where the principles were being used or could be used a little better.

IT Volunteers working with our audience members to identify the CARP principles at work in their marketing materials

And finally, we gave them some scissors and tape, a blank sheet of paper, and some pieces of an ad, with different sized pictures, headings, and paragraph text, and told them to create an ad, using the CARP principles we had just taught them.

These are the raw materials we gave our audience to work with, to design an ad using the design principles we had just taught them.

When they were done, we had them show their ad to the rest of the group and explain why they had created that particular design, using the CARP principles.

Friday, August 5th, 2-4 p.m. “Designing for Print vs. Designing for Web and Cost Cutting Ideas”

Day three. Last day. You are almost done learning more than you ever expected to about our practicum.

So, whose parents happen to own a printing business? Oh, that’s right. Mine! Yep, I guess I qualified for teaching a session on what printers look for in a file. Margins, bleed, paper size, resolution, colors, etc.

When designing for print, there are a lot of things to keep in mind that are different from designing for web. And if you know these things and create your own files, your printer will like you a whole lot more as a customer.

We had another activity afterwards, where we pretended to be a print shop, and had our two audience members come to us, asking for a project to be printed. They had to negotiate price, based on quantities, size of finished product, and deadline.

After that was over, we still had about 45 minutes left of our session.

So in a quick needs assessment, we found out that they wanted to know a couple Photoshop tricks. So I taught everyone (including the other IT volunteers) how to create Photoshop actions, and how to batch process images.

Assessment

Overall, I think our practicum went very well. It was a little weird for me, because I basically became the “expert” during our three days of training. When have I ever been the “expert?” Seems like there has always been someone else to turn to! But it was good. I think the people at YFA learned a few things, and we did, too. Doing this definitely boosted my confidence in-country—something that I sorely needed by this point of PST. I was glad my fellow volunteers were so amiable about letting me take charge. They were also wonderful in that they were willing to step up, learn a few things, and quickly turn around to teach those things to others.

And, to sum it all up:

Our program manager sent an email out to all CBD PCTs after our practicums were over, and told us, “…my congrats and claps go to you for being able to conduct productive training, though given such a short time for prep work. Now I see that you all are ready to swear in and work productively for two years in your respective communities.”

Peace Corps Armenia 2011 Swearing In Program

Now, I am here, in my respective community, ready to work productively for two years… Stay tuned for stories of my life as an official Peace Corps Volunteer in Armenia!