We were recently asked about using DocsPlus to support students in Vocational Programs. With Wordbars to support structured written work and WorkSpaces to organize ideas and plan for writing, it’s certainly a great program to support your students.
In terms of content on LearningGrids, you will find ready-made vocabulary support within our curriculum categories for some vocational programs – for example, the Healthy Human Diet Wordbar in our Science category for Culinary Arts courses.
As you can imagine, comprehensive coverage across the vast number of different programs is tricky. And with the style of written work expected from students often being quite particular to the unique contextual settings, providing ready-made content may not always be a good fit. However, what’s great about DocsPlus is how incredibly quick and easy it is to make truly personalized resources from scratch, which are absolutely the right fit for your programs and your students.
For example, as part of a Cosmetology program, we are looking at health and safety. Students are asked for responses to a range of different hazards that they might encounter. We could use a mind map in WorkSpace offering different hazard scenarios, and students make notes in response to each hazard. And what’s more, we can export the content of the plan to a document for direct support while writing.
Another example might be to get students to add labels to a diagram from a textbook or a photograph from a case study – such as a vehicle system as part of an Automotive Technology program. And once the words have been added, they can be highlighted and used to create a Wordbar, so that students have access to relevant vocabulary to support any additional writing.
This is just an outline of how the features of DocsPlus can be applied to any subject – within the traditional academic curriculum or in vocational programs – where writing or planning is involved. For more information about getting the best out of all of the features of DocsPlus, see our fantastic video support tutorials for DocsPlus on the Crick Software website.
