We were delighted to see the comments from Melissa Milloway, Education and Communications Manager at Amazon, on LinkedIn regarding her experience with Disarming Microaggressions.

“I promise this is not an ad, just something I need to share because it is a gem of a course. I cannot say enough great things about an off the shelf course I recently took … It so so rare you find a really well done off the shelf course. If you’re looking for a course on Microaggressions definitely check out SunShower’s course on Disarming Microaggressions. Everything is so well done from the cohesiveness of the visual design, the short videos that have sticky stories that go throughout the course, the care they took with accessibility (even to add in audio descriptions), to the activities that help you practice what you learned. Plus, the content all comes from a major SME in this field. They even have a separate resource to help with performance support after you go through the initial one. A big thanks to Joel Lesko for your work on this!

I reviewed 6-7 off the shelf courses on this topic for a project that I’m no longer on. This was the only one that I’d even remotely consider. I not only enjoyed the experience but got a lot out of it as a learner. I still remember a lot of what I learned, especially from the scenarios of Jane and Tamara.  

1. The content was extremely purposeful. No fluff. If I went through the course and critiqued it I could tell you the purpose of every single element from videos to text. When I design courses this is something I strive to do to minimize unnecessary cognitive load.

2. The content flow made sense and built well. It didn’t just jump into topics and also it explained “the why” for each topic. So I felt more invested.

3. The activities were scenario driven which made it easier to apply what I learned. Some of the questions were self-reflective which made me pause and think about how I would handle the situation. The one thing I would change is that some activities had feedback and some did not. That’s where I believe there’s an opportunity for reinforcement. Also I have soft rules for myself on types of interactions I will use in Rise for different purposes. Some of the interactions didn’t follow this but it wasn’t a deal breaker and could easily be changed.

4. The design was cohesive and not in a way that’s distracting. The visuals are done in a way where they enhance the experience and don’t detract from them. I loved that the animations were subtle and really focused on the person’s emotion in their voices, their thoughts. etc.

5. Dr. Sue shared his own personal stories on camera as a SME. The one where he is on an airplane and is told to move to the back along is extremely powerful. I don’t have enough space to type out more here but it’s probably one of the most effective videos in the course.

Overall, I feel confident that I built new skills that I will use and refreshed on others.”

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