{"id":753,"date":"2010-03-14T15:53:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-14T20:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/nigs-first-3-classes-complete\/"},"modified":"2013-07-10T18:45:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-10T23:45:22","slug":"nigs-first-3-classes-complete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/nigs-first-3-classes-complete\/","title":{"rendered":"NIGS \u2013 First 3 Classes Complete"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In January, I decided to work toward a certificate program offered by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.genealogicalstudies.com\/\">National Institute for Genealogical Studies<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019m working on the American Records certificate, and have completed my first three classes:\u00a0 Methodology Part 1, US Census Records, and Electronic Resources.\u00a0 I started my fourth course, US Land Records on March 1st, and will begin two more courses (Methodology Part 2 and US Vital Records) on April 5th.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So far, I\u2019m enjoying the courses.\u00a0 I\u2019m learning new things in a structured way, which is helping with my research.\u00a0 Since these first courses are the Basic Level, there is some overlap with what I already know, but in some cases, it serves as a reminder and is strengthening my knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the assignments are practical.\u00a0 For example, we had to analyze an 1870 Products of Industry schedule of the census.\u00a0 For me, this was a great exercise, as I had never used this type of schedule prior to this class.<\/p>\n<p>The one thing I don\u2019t like so much is that you don\u2019t really get any feedback from the instructors.\u00a0 Each level has an Analysis &amp; Skills Mentoring course, where you do \u201cmeet\u201d with the instructor twice during the course.\u00a0 But so far in the other courses, I have not received any feedback.\u00a0 It is possible that you get feedback upon the completion of the course, but technically, my three course do not end until March 28th (I have completed all the assignments and the exam though).<\/p>\n<p>Some of the assignments are \u201cpublic\u201d meaning you post them to a message board type tool and others can view your answer (likewise, you can view others\u2019 answers).\u00a0 You have the ability to send an email message to a classmate, but not the ability to comment directly on their assignment post.\u00a0 I think this would be a nice feature.<\/p>\n<p>One thing I\u2019ve noticed from the public assignments, is the lack of thought from a few of the students.\u00a0 In some cases, it seems that they\u2019re just posting a quick answer without putting much thought into it.\u00a0 In other cases, I\u2019ve seen people basically give the impression that they only use Ancestry for their research, without regard to other resources.\u00a0 Then, why, I ask, are they taking these courses?\u00a0 They don\u2019t really seem open to learning about additional resources, and these classes are not exactly cheap.\u00a0 I truly hope that my impression is wrong, but I fear some of them may simply be after the certificate and postnomials PLCGS (Professional Learning Certificate in Genealogical Studies).\u00a0 Regardless of the other students\u2019 intent, I am set on learning all that I can to enhance my research and analysis skills.\u00a0 The certificate and postnomials are a bonus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In January, I decided to work toward a certificate program offered by the National Institute for Genealogical Studies.\u00a0 I\u2019m working on the American Records certificate, and have completed my first three classes:\u00a0 Methodology Part 1, US Census Records, and Electronic Resources.\u00a0 I started my fourth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[301,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-genblog","category-genblog","cat-301-id","cat-25-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-c9","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3761,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/3761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}