Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

Instructional Designer & Consultant

Instructional Design

Terminology Tuesday: Hustle

This week’s term isn’t really specifically related to Instructional Design; it’s a little more broad, and can be applied to any profession. It was inspired by a recent conversation in the E-Learning Heroes Community, and is a term I always find myself using when talking to aspiring freelancers.

Hustle 

In my opinion, the hustle is anything you do to generate new leads for business. In the freelance (or independent or contracting…whatever you prefer) world, you really can’t afford to turn your inner salesperson off. Eventually, you might be able to reduce the amount of hustling you do, but that’s a luxury a lot of folks just can’t afford.

Hustling can take many forms. For example, cold-calling/emailing, promoting your portfolio, creating social media profiles, participating actively in community and social media discussions, or applying directly to job prospects.

The phrase “Everyday I’m hustling'” is an accurate one!

Resources

I really don’t have resources for this week’s term; however, feel free to inquire with me in the comments, and I’ll offer my best stab at advice. Don’t let the idea of hustling stand in the way of your dream. Create your own freedom!

E-Learning Challenge #4 – Flatten Up Your Course Design Skills

Earlier this week, I asked David to challenge roulette me some challenges to work on next (because I need peer pressure), and he gave me some suggestions for the more popular challenges, and then some recommendations for ones that need a little bit of love. This challenge was one of the first challenges, and it needed a little love, so love I gave it.

The Concept

Create a flat course design template, using at least three slides, and showing how the flat design concept will move throughout the course. The slides could be static or entirely built-out interactions.

The Method

Initially, I was going to include a progress meter, but figured I would save that effort for the progress meter challenge….so I did. Instead, I used Tint UI  to create my palette for the sample slides, added some key elements (e.g. header, navigation buttons), and then changed up a few different screen styles. I made use of some free flat icons I acquired from somewhere on Creative Market or Smashing Magazine (I’m sorry…I can’t remember!), and then made final modifications to the player settings before publishing.

The Result

Screen Shot 2015-01-29 at 9.04.52 AM

Click Here to see the Full Demo.

 

E-Learning Challenge #41 – Low-Tech, High-Speed Course Design

Tonight I was sifting through the previous ELH challenges, and decided to take my artistic abilities to the next level (in my opinion), so I settled in for a doozy of a challenge!

The Concept

Get back to basics and create an emergency response course using pen and paper. Now, I’ll humour David here, but if I was presented with this ‘interaction’ when I was in school, I would have dropped out immediately. This task required us to take a news story or disaster event and help learners navigate the event.

The Method

Inspired by the giant winter storm that is making its way up the eastern seaboard this evening, I was reminded of White Juan. White Juan was a giant snowstorm that brought our city to a standstill mere months after Hurricane Juan decimated much of our coastal areas. There was so much snow that folks had to wait for their neighbours to somehow magically get out of their homes to shovel them (the other un-freed neighbours) out. I believe my folks were stuck inside for two or three days because they couldn’t open their windows/doors. Bananas, right?

I grabbed my mousepad (which is also a giant post-it note/memo pad), ripped off a couple of sheets and got to work. I added a header and a prompt (which you can’t read very well in the example, but I’ll transcribe – don’t worry), drew an emergency kit (or a child’s backpack – same difference), and went to work drawing items that might be in the kit.

All of the items were drawn on itty bitty post it notes, which I then affixed to the main content ‘slide’. I imagined a drag and drop interaction where users would drag the items to the emergency kit.

Taking a second sheet of memo pad, I re-drew the emergency kit, added the header and prompt, did some research over at the Red Cross’ website and added the correct responses (post-it notes), and then added a little note.

I then took photos, with my iPhone, of both ‘slides’. Ta-da!

The Result

Here is an image of the main content slide. The transcription is as follows: 

Header: “SNOWSTORM 2015”

Prompt: “CHOOSE ITEMS TO FILL YOUR EMERGENCY KIT! (CHOOSE WISELY)

ELH_Challenge_41_1

Here is the correct feedback slide. The transcript is as follows:

Header: “SNOWSTORM 2015”

Prompt: “IF YOU CHOSE THE FOLLOWING ITEMS, YOU CHOSE WISELY (ACCORDING TO THE RED CROSS)”

Note: “PLEASE NOTE: WHILE THEY MAY SEEM IMPORTANT, THE FOLLOWING ITEMS ARE CONSIDERED NON-ESSENTIAL IN THE EVENT OF A SNOWSTORM (ACCORDING TO THE RED CROSS): CAKE, NETFLIX, ALCOHOL, BEAGLE, SNOWMEN. STAY SAFE!”

ELH_Challenge_41_2

Disclaimer: If we get nearly as much of a blizzard as Environment Canada is calling for, I will be sitting on my couch, with my beagle, watching Netflix (providing the power does not go out), eating cake, and drinking wine…I may have a burst of energy, and will use that to build a snowman.

E-Learning Challenge #67 – How Do Instructional Designers Work?

Alright folks – I’m riding on a high over here because my VERY FIRST BOOK (!!!!) just became available for pre-order (GET ON THAT!) – EEEE! You’ll have to be patient with me and not judget the abundance of exclamation points. Some buzz on Twitter had me worried for this challenge, but then when I found out it was a podcast challenge, I WAS SO EXCITED!!! I love the podcast challenges. It makes me feel so much closer to my friends (aka the e-learning community).

The Challenge

This week’s challenge was to record answers to the following questions:

  1. What’s your job title? What title do you think really captures your roles and responsibilities?
  2. What software tools do you love?
  3. What’s your workspace setup like?
  4. What is your creative or design philosophy?
  5. How do you stay fresh and keep building your skills?
  6. How do you avoid burnout?
  7. How do you save time and boost your efficiency day-to-day?
  8. How do you manage your workflow? Do you have a project management tool you love?
  9. What books or blogs have been influential to you?
  10. What kinds of tasks do you love to do? What gets you excited to sit down at your desk?
  11. What do you like to do least? How do you keep yourself motivated to do that stuff?

The Method

I wrote out all of my responses in notepad because I’m not great at winging it, and then I recorded and edited each response in Camtasia, exported, and uploaded to Sound Cloud – EASY PEASY!

The Result

E-Learning Challenge #66 – Creative Invoice Designs for Course Designers

This week’s challenge entry is probably my least imaginative, but I’m not feeling 100% and I gave it a go anyhow. For 2015, I’ve resolved to try to be less hard on myself.

The Concept

This week we were tasked with sharing a creative example of an invoice or invoice template. Invoices – exciting! No, but really…if you’re doing any sort of independent work, you need to have some sort of invoice or else you run the risk of not getting paid (or having a harder time getting your ducks in a row come tax time).

The Method

I developed two examples, one of which only involved modifying the information on my current invoice template for my own small business. The other was modified based on a word invoice template I found awhile back. Neither are particularly wow-ing, but they get the job done, and I can tell you first-hand that my first example gets me paid. Effective? I’d say so!

Both invoices were created in Microsoft Word and then saved as a PDF format.

The Result

Screen Shot 2015-01-21 at 8.31.47 AM

View the Full PDF Here.

Screen Shot 2015-01-21 at 10.18.46 AM

View the Full PDF Here.

Terminology Tuesday: 45/15 Rule

I am no stranger to procrastination…by any stretch. So much so, that I tend to factor procrastination into my workflow and feel as though I produce better work under pressure…probably not true, but I’ll let myself believe it. Whatever you choose to believe, you should make an effort (like I do) to be more productive. That’s why I subscribe to the 45/15 rule!

The 45/15 Rule

The 45/15 rule is a great model for productive workflow (in my opinion) because it encourages you to break up each hour into 45 minutes of productive work and 15 minutes of procrastination, distraction, or time spent otherwise not working. For me, this rule works really well because I see it as a challenge – how many pages can I write in 45 minutes? How many emails can I respond to in 45 minutes? How much of a course can I author in 45 minutes? And then, I reward myself by 1 – ticking items off my to do list and 2 – watching cat videos or surfing social media for 15 minutes!

This rule helps me channel my productivity while still allowing me to indulge in the procrastination I’ve grown to love and appreciate (and whom I have nurtured for many years).

If it helps, you can use an alarm – I did this at first. However, I tend to find the actual alarm sound to be jarring, so I’ve opted to calculate my hour by using even hours on my clock.

Resources