Starting from Scratch: Collaboratively Designing a New Online Educational Program for Immigrant Advocates

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Session Type: Concurrent Sessions

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Join us to learn how we can collaborate to expand access to justice! VIISTA the Villanova Interdisciplinary Immigration Studies Training for Advocates, is a new, online certificate program to train immigrant advocates to be qualified to apply to the DOJ for accreditation to represent migrants and refugees in immigration court and before the Department of Homeland Security. It addresses the huge access to justice problem in immigration – 6 of 10 immigrants goes to court without a lawyer; represented immigrants are 10x more likely to succeed on the merits – by thinking outside the box; outside the JD. There will never be enough lawyers to represent everyone who needs help – if there were, access to justice would be universal. VIISTA is a proof of concept for the idea that we can add additional layers into the legal services ecosystem, just like the medical field provided space for nurse practitioners and physicians assistants. You will engage in the user-centered curriculum design process – through examples of the choice moments and the innovative approaches we’ve used in VIISTA’s design. You will engage in a series of short user-centered design exercises, including creating empathy, prototyping, and refining and in exercises and demonstrations that consider the value of innovations in curriculum design, such as:  Deliberately designing curriculum from its inception with input from potential employers and practitioners  Aligning competencies/learning goals directly with tasks graduates will perform on the job  Building curriculum from an interdisciplinary perspective  Building curriculum using modular design  Interleaving of Course Topics so that students see the interrelation between topics and their application in real life  Building and embedding formative assessment  Crafting active learning exercises to teach lawyering skills (such as interviewing and counseling and trial advocacy) in an online setting  Using online tools to build a community of learners