Simplify Language

Course Description

When communicating, your audience may include donors, chancellors, or students and colleagues from diverse backgrounds. Effective communication is fundamental to collaboration, trust, and success.

In this interactive workshop, you will learn and practice 10 skills to improve spoken and written communication. Make changes that allow your audience to quickly and easily understand your website, emails, applications, presentations, job postings, and more. Learn actionable skills to make CU a more language inclusive place.

Learning Outcomes

  • Organize and reduce writing by 20-50% without removing or “dumbing down” content.
  • Build awareness around language exclusion and impacts of power and privilege.
  • Improve the effectiveness of translations and decrease costs.
  • Learn skills to communicate with beginning to advanced English learners.
  • Use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make written communication more accessible.
  • Improve engagement, trust, efficiency, inclusion, recruitment, and retention.

Who should attend

Anyone who communicates with people who prefer clear, brief communication. This training is beneficial to all communicators, and some of the content is essential for interacting with English learners.

*Please be prepared to leave your camera on and to do activities in small groups.

  Cost

There is no cost for this course.

  Upcoming Sessions

  • Virtual: February 20th, 2025, from 1:30 - 3:30 pm, via Zoom

  Instructor(s)

Lee Shainis


   Contact Perri Longley with questions.

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I loved this training! My "word of the year" for 2023 is "simplify" so this was perfect for me. I learned great strategies for making communicating simpler for all involved. I struggle with being concise so this was great practice. I also really enjoyed hearing about diverse experiences from other participants and their struggles with language barriers. I also enjoyed the mix of breakout rooms, practice questions, discussion, etc. It is often a struggle for me to pay attention and stay truly engaged for a two-hour training, but I feel like the time flew by and I was genuinely interested throughout.

View of campus by Glenn A

This is the most engaged/invested/together I have ever seen my team at a meeting in 4.5 years. In the past 10 minutes, 4 people contacted me to express their thanks and appreciation. One wrote: "Lee was wonderful! truly was so beneficial. I honestly was dreading a 2-hour meeting and I felt it could have been longer. I'm so thankful we had it!"

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I like that the training was collaborative, inclusive, and simple. I learned a lot of valuable information. What stood out to me the most was learning the implications of overcommunicating and having email communication that isn't effective because it is too lengthy and hard to read. This causes your reader to either miss information or skip your email all together.